by Mike Sharkey
Staff Writer
Andy Warhol once said that everyone gets 15 minutes of fame. Erik Larsen got an hour and a half and won a bunch of money in the process.
By trade, Larsen works at Haydon Burns Library (until Nov. 12, that is when the staff moves to the New Main Library) where he works in the library’s reference section. He helps patrons find materials and he is into collection development and purchasing.
“One of the first jobs I had when I got here was buying $10,000 worth of jazz CDs,” said Larsen, who moved to Jacksonville two and a half years ago because, like many Northerners, he was tired of shoveling snow. “I enjoyed that job very much. I went through lots of jazz reference books and it was a happy few days picking out all the CDs. I also supervise three part-time shelvers and I create the theme for the monthly CD display at the checkout desk.”
That’s Larsen’s real job. His claim to fame, however, is three separate stints on ‘Jeopardy!’ The latest was back in February when Larsen and the rest of the best of the best played against each other for the right to compete against Ken Jennings, the soft-spoken Utahan who became a legend last year when he won 74 matches and over $2.5 million, easily making him the game show’s most prolific player.
Larsen said he got the call from ‘Jeopardy!’ organizers sometime in late November or early December of last year. After receiving the invite to play in the Ultimate Tournament of Champions, the rest was on Larsen. He admitted he hadn’t been a regular viewer of the show, so Larsen wasn’t totally aware of the Jennings mystique that had perpetuated itself through blowout win after blowout win.
“I agreed right away to play,” said Larsen, who has his undergraduate degree from Northwestern University and his graduate degree from the University of Michigan. “I thought I was retired and I had nothing to prove anymore. I started paying more attention, but I didn’t watch regularly until after the streak ended.”
Larsen’s first appearance on ‘Jeopardy!’ came in the fall of 1989. After scoring well on a 50-question written exam, Larsen and two other potential contestants participated in a short, mock version of the real game.
“They were looking for people who could handle the pressure and not freeze up. I knew the only thing I could control was how well I did and not worry about the other two,” said Larsen, adding he learned in college how to handle the stress of providing correct answers quickly under pressure. “I was on the College Bowl team at Northwestern and Michigan and we used the same kind of signaling devices.”
Larsen fared well in the mock game as well as the one-on-one interview with the contestant coordinator. The whole tryout process lasted about three hours and six weeks later Larsen was on a plane to Los Angeles to play in the real thing. He became a five-time winner and racked up $54,000 in the process. However, he didn’t get to keep it all.
“I filled out tax forms they (‘Jeopardy!’ organizers) gave me. I had to pay California state tax, federal tax and, because I was living in Michigan at the time, Michigan state tax,” said Larsen. “After taxes, I took home about $37,500.”
The next year, Larsen played in the show’s annual Tournament of Champions, made it to the semi-finals and pocketed another $5,000. Then, he watched from his living room for 15 years.
When he got the call, Larsen said, he started working on areas that could cause him problems. One of the great equalizers on ‘Jeopardy!,’ he said, is the fact that each show’s 12 subjects are purely random and that randomness can negate one player’s strengths while helping another player that has a broad base of knowledge. It’s this theory that Larsen was counting on to help him in the tournament that would ultimately produce two challengers for Jennings.
Larsen didn’t make it past the first round back in February, but was the highest scoring finisher among non-winners. That earned him a return trip to L.A. as an alternate in case a first-round winner couldn’t make it or didn’t show.
“Everyone showed up, so I got paid an extra $2,500 to sit in the audience and watch,” said Larsen, who paid his own way in February, but earned $5,000 in appearance money.
Jennings didn’t win the Ultimate Tournament of Champions and Larsen said it really didn’t surprise him. Despite the fact that Jennings — a Mormon who could rattle off the names of cocktails as quickly as Bible verses or Tibetan history — seemed to have a knowledge base that even wowed show host Alex Trebek, his loss reinforced Larsen’s belief that ‘Jeopardy!’ will always contain an element of luck.
‘Jeopardy!’ taught me that no one knows everything about everything,” he said. “Even Ken Jennings puts his pants on one leg at a time.”
He said the biggest trick was learning when to push the signaling button.
“I would listen to the question and read it off the board. Then formulate the correct question to the answer in my mind and ring in. All in about a second and a half,” said Larsen. “There’s a lot to do and it’s much more difficult playing in the studio than it is from the comfort of your easy chair.”
Today Larsen spends his free time at Suns and Barracudas games, reading, surfing the Internet and walking for exercise. He has another interesting hobby that takes him all over the state.
“I am a licensed amateur boxing official,” he said. “I judge fights and time fights, but mostly I work as a ringside judge. I am working on getting my state certification as a professional judge.”
Larsen said he has about 200-250 of the required 350 rounds that he needs to apply to the state boxing commission for his professional certification (the rounds are just one of the criteria the commission uses).
“I have to travel around Florida to rack up rounds because there just isn’t much boxing in Jacksonville, amateur or professional,” said Larsen, who said he still watches ‘Jeopardy!’ (but not regularly) and still blurts out the answers (because he can).