For four UF students, winning a national title has nothing to do with touchdowns or free throws. Their task is a much more difficult one - making people laugh.
A group of four UF stand-up comedians will represent the university at the finals of the National College Comedy Competition of the Rooftop Comedy Festival in Aspen, Colo.
The team, composed of UF students Calvin Cole, Lane Pieschel, Rudy Mendoza, and Tim Keck, survived five rounds of competitions judged by live and online audiences to become one of the final four, out of 32 college teams seeking to be crowned the nation's "Funniest Comedy Team."
UF's team will go up against the University of Minnesota's team tonight at 11 p.m., EST, when each team's comedians will perform five-minute comedy sets.
The performances will stream live on RooftopComedy.com, where online viewers can vote for their favorite team up to 30 minutes after the final performance.Votes cast online and by the live audience will determine the round's winner, which will face-off at a final round on Saturday.
Pieschel, a recent UF graduate with a degree in English, won the competition's regional semi-finals in 2008, when individual comedians - not teams - competed. He feels confident about his team's chances. Although, he jokes, a 45-year-old woman on Minnesota's team might give him some trouble.
"As long as we don't overthink things and do the best we can, I think we'll be all right," Pieschel said. "I doubt any of these other teams are really amping it up."
With a national title on their minds, the four prepared for the mountain showdown by borrowing a strategy from Urban Meyer's playbook - watching videos of their opponents.
Here, their competitive nature revealed itself. While watching a video of a competing student's routine from an earlier round, the UF team laughed after a joke fell flat.
Weak responses to jokes are common for any stand-up comedian - especially the four on UF's team, who perform regularly at the Coconuts Comedy Club in Gainesville in front of audiences that are at times unresponsive.
Cole, a film studies senior, believes his teammates' shared performing experience (four to five shows a week) gives them a competitive advantage over the other teams.
"We work together all the time," he said. "We best represent the spirit of the competition."
The UF team reflects a wide range of experience. While Pieschel has performed for nearly three years, Keck's debut was for the competition's qualifying round last February. The comedians like to poke fun at Keck's "freshman" status on the team.
"When we get to Aspen, Tim will just stay in the hotel," Pieschel joked.
Cole jumped in with a comment about the team's desire to win.
"We're all pretty deserving," he said. "Well, not Tim."
Keck doesn't mind. The telecommunications junior had always feared being on stage by himself, but he was hooked after his first show.
"It was the first time I did something I knew I wanted to keep doing," he said.
Like Keck, Cole was an early bloomer. In fall 2007, he started taking classes and performing at Coconuts, where he received warm receptions from audiences.Cole remembers when a stranger approached him and complimented him on a joke, which the stranger had tried unsuccessfully to retell to his friends. Cole considers it the best compliment he's ever received.
"When you're a comedian, the joke is yours from beginning to end," he said. "This guy tried to steal it, and it didn't work. But he tried."
Mendoza, an engineering junior, had a slower start than the other three. He described the audience reaction to his debut performance in the Reitz Union in February 2008 as "five minutes of silence."
"The first six months were really bad," Mendoza said. "I kept wondering, 'Am I good enough?' and 'Am I funny enough?'"
As he continued to write jokes, however, Mendoza gained confidence and performed in the second round of last year's competition. Eventually he was asked to headline a show at Coconuts, in which he had to deal with rude audience members.
"At one point I just told them to shut the fuck up," he said. "The audience cheered, and I ended strong."
Mendoza feels his struggles have prepared him for a victory in Aspen.
The four comedians look forward to proving themselves and having their hard work noticed.
"It's not just having a good time," Cole said. "It's a lot of work and a real payoff. But all the rewards are yours. You're convincing the world one step at a time that you deserve to be listened to."
