The College Sports Piece

It's too late to say Happy New Year, so I'm not going to do that. Instead, I'm going to say well done to Durham, who became the first quartet in University Challenge history to retain their trophy in the Christmas series. Indeed, they are the only quartet who have ever had the chance to retain their trophy, because in the regular series, contestants cannot return, and because this is the first time that the Christmas series has had returning teams.

But hang on - I might have just had an incredible idea.

What if contestants could return?

Like in American college sports. Or Quidditch.

So, if a player makes it onto their uni team when they were in their first year, they could also come back in their second and third years (like Benedict Cumberbatch in Starter for 10). I'm imagining that there would still be in-university qualifiers for the team, so there would be no guarantee that you could come back, but if you were really good you'd have a shot.

This would mean that we could have the same quizzers coming back for multiple years, which would add to the connection viewers might have with particular universities. It would give players who got a tough draw the opportunity to avenge losses, would add connective tissue between each series, would give players the opportunity to cement themselves as legends of the game. Might even create longstanding beefs, which would drum up some nice controversy.

The drawback would be that fewer people make it onto the show, but we should still get the best quizzers.

Let me know in the comments what you think of this idea.

For now, on with the show, which was the first match of 2026, and the final match of the second round - Churchill vs Merton.

Here's your first starter for ten.

Cosnett kicks things off with an incorrect guess of Rodin. Hasler tries to steal the points for Churchill, but can't. McGovern takes the replacement starter to put Churchill in front, but they struggle with bonuses on synthesised film scores, taking only one.

Making up for his mistake, Cosnett buzzes early with Beowulf and Merton are in the game. Pius gives Cosnett another ten points, and Merton took the lead. When Duncan took the picture starter, the Oxford quartet were motoring.

It was the FA Cup 3rd round this weekend, and an FA Cup cliche is that when a lower league team (I had Merton seeded 1st and Churchill 9th ahead of the second round) gets a goal within the first few minutes, they are said to have 'scored too early'. Perhaps Churchill scored too early here, because Merton did not take lightly the fact that they dropped behind and are storming clear now.

The Hedgehog and the Fox puts Merton 75 points to the good, so when Seshan takes another for Churchill it looks like it might only be a consolation. But there is a second consecutive starter from Seshan, and perhaps we have a comeback on our hands.

Both sides drop the music starter, with Duncan picking up the replacement for Merton. Cosnett follows this up with tortoise, and the Premier League side (by my estimation) start exerting their strength once again.

Churchill come close to threatening, with a few good starters from Seshan and Hasler, but whenever things get too tight, Cosnett is on hand to dispel the danger, ending with seven starters to his name in a comfortable win.

Churchill 115 - 180 Merton

So, that's the second round over. There was a remarkably consistent set of winning scores over the eight matches, with three winning teams scoring both 180 and 190. Sheffield's 290-point romp being the only major outlier. I don't know what that says other than that the quarter-finals are going to be very hard to predict.

So hard, in fact, that I might not do it. My second round predictions are below. Based on rankings, I only got 4 of the top 8 correct, but if you go by whether or not the higher seed won, I got 5/8, which isn't much better. The big failure being when 2-seed Magdalen got trounced by 16-seed Darwin. Oops.

1. Merton -->
2. Magdalen
3. Warwick -->
4. UCL -->
5. Imperial -->
6. LSE
7. Southampton
8. Trinity
9. Churchill
10. Sheffield -->
11. Manchester -->
12. Edinburgh -->
13. Bristol
14. Lincoln
15. Strathclyde
16. Darwin -->

See you next time for the first of the quarter-finals - Edinburgh vs Manchester.