Colby Burnett
| Colby Burnett | |
| Current college | none |
| Past colleges | Northwestern (2001-2005) |
| High school | Fenwick |
| Stats | HDWhite • NAQT |
| ||||
| Current team: Fenwick (2011-present) | ||||
| Career record: unknown | ||||
| school: none | ||||
Colby Burnett is a current coach (since 2012) at Fenwick High School, where he played quizbowl as an HS teammate of Mike Sorice. In college, he played for Northwestern.
As a player, Burnett was good enough to earn all-Conference honors, and in the first year of its inception, was named Second Team All-State as part of the IHSSBCA All-State program.
On television
In 2012 (aired November 7-20), Burnett was a contestant on the Jeopardy! Teachers Tournament. He defeated the 14 other contestants, and won $100,000. As a tournament winner, Burnett automatically qualified for the annual Tournament of Champions (aired February 13-26, 2013). Burnett defeated the field, and became the first person to win the Teachers Tournament and the TOC. This earned Burnett an additional $250,000.
The next year, in honor of the show's 30th anniversary, Burnett was invited back to participate in the Jeopardy! Battle of the Decades. Burnett won his first game, and qualified as a wildcard for the semifinals, but finished second in the semifinal to eventual 3rd place finisher Roger Craig. This added $25,000 to his career Jeopardy! winnings.
Having earned a degree of fame (his $375,000 ranks him among the show's all time money winners), Burnett was invited to participate in the third and final season of the syndicated reality competition King of the Nerds, which aired in 2015. Of the 12 contestants, Burnett was the 6th to be eliminated from competition.
In 2016, Burnett made one appearance on the game show 500 Questions.
On 18 December 2012, Illinois Governor Pat Quinn appeared at Fenwick and proclaimed that day to be "Colby Burnett Day" in Illinois. The governor made a bit of a rambling speech, but Colby gave a short, eloquent one.
As representative of the human race
Colby was one of four people (Ben Ingram, Alex Jacob, and Kristin Sausville being the other three) asked to represent the human race in a quizbowl match against QANTA, a computer with some degree of artificial intelligence. The match took place as an exhibition at the 2015 HSNCT. The carbon-based units played the silicon-based unit to a 200-200 tie. After going out to an unanswered lead, it was Colby who began the rally against our computer overlords, making him the first real life John Connor (if there had been more TRASH, Colby would have utterly dissected this thing's circuit boards).