“Jeopardy!” just happened to be on TV while Yellowlees Douglas was getting her hair braided in 1996. She couldn’t help but shout out the answers.
“It was fun that I might know the answers, and I might not,” she said.
Seventeen years later, the UF business professor appeared on the show as a contestant in the episode that aired Friday.
Douglas fell to second place with $3,200 and took home $2,000. She lost by $3,599.
“Did I think I was going to win?” Douglas recalled. “No. I just didn’t want to embarrass myself.”
Inspired by an Alligator article about a UF honors student who took the “Jeopardy!” qualifying test, Douglas began trying to get on the show two years ago.
Last March, she took the online qualifying test for the show. Out of 25 questions, she said she only missed one because she ran out of time.
A representative from the show gave her three weeks’ notice for her June 6 audition in New York City.
The day before the audition, she went kayaking on the Hudson River and got sick from getting some of water in her mouth. The friends she was staying with tried to convince her to not go to the audition, but Douglas went anyway.
In October, she was called back and flown to Los Angeles for the taping of the show.
Douglas said she had trouble buzzing in her answers because she doesn’t have an opposable thumb. She said she only had a chance when the other contestants didn’t know the answer.
Douglas said she joked around on the set with host Alex Trebek and the show’s producers.
“It was the biggest event in everyone’s life except me,” she said, “and I treated it like a big joke.”
The Final Jeopardy! question was about a brother and sister team who lost in the 1969 Academy Awards. Even though she couldn’t remember who the pair was, she wagered $7,000, according to www.j-archive.com, because her aunt Maggie Smith won the Academy Award for best actress that year for “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie,” Douglas said.
Douglas said she went on the show to get exposure for voiceover work.
Since the episode aired, Douglas has reconnected with high school friends who saw her on the show and a man even proposed marriage to her.
“Jeopardy!” fan Alex Rubenstein became curious when he heard Douglas say she was from Gainesville on the show. The 27-year-old management doctoral student looked her up on the UF College of Business website and found her.
“I immediately began rooting for her,” he said.
Contact Colleen Wright at cwright@alligator.org.
Yellowlees Douglas, a UF business professor, competed on the game show “Jeopardy!” and took home $2,000. Douglas finished in second place.
