Behind The Scenes Of The Dozen Philadelphia Title Run
On Tuesday Night we taped The Dozen Season 3 Kickoff in a live show from The Met in Philadelphia. This is a trivia competition that started over quarantine and for us to be playing massive theaters just a few years later is mind blowing. Shoutout to Jeff D. Lowe for creating an incredible product that everyone has bought into.
[SPOILERS BELOW]
Being part of Team Yak is incredible. I'm the third banana by several country miles, but I'm just happy to be there. Nobody is luckier than me to be where they are and I don't take it for granted. We've done a few live shows, in LA and Chicago and they've all been so fun. The crowd is incredible and the lights are bright. Making an entrance like a wrestler is also super fun.
When we found out our draw, I'm not gonna lie, it was intimidating. We were slated to play Frank & The Frankettes in the 1st Round. Now they're a great team without question, but it's almost on another level when they play us. We've never beaten them. Something like 0-3 or 0-4. They're our Boogieman. We lost to them both in LA in the Finals and in Chicago in the Finals there too. So getting them in the 1st Round in Philly wasn't ideal.
Despite the draw, I was very optimistic. I'm always optimistic, but I had studied in the days leading up and I'm always confident in our team. We are a good team. A damn good team. Big Cat, Rone, and I all have pretty similar knowledge bases. Big Cat is great at college stuff and random questions, Rone is awesome at music and celebrity mashup, and they're both really good at NFL and NBA, which are my biggest strengths. In my opinion we are the best venn diagram of trivia brains. But pre-game, my teammates didn't necessarily share my optimism. But I knew once the bright lights hit us, they'd rise to the occasion, which is exactly what they did.
The crowd was really into it as Rone was a hometown guy and him and Big Cat are such likeable personalities.
Once we started getting a couple questions right, we started feeling good.
But we were trailing for a bit. That is, until JJ Redick made an appearance.
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Directly after that, Big Cat turned to Rone and I and said, we've got them on the ropes. We were down two points after seven rounds, but he was right. Then we started rolling.
If I'm being totally honest, I almost cost our team the match with a giant flub on the niche round. I had memorized the Top 10 NFL Draft picks from 2010-2019, but I was playing Jeff D. Lowe and not thinking about the question and just got "Dozen Brain", which is a real thing. I initially focused on the incorrect part of the question and just got flustered. Tough look, but we survived and what a way to end our streak! This emotion was all genuine and it was pure happiness after the match.
We were the second match to play, so we got off-stage, had to get our mics checked and went right back out there for the Finals vs. Uptown Balls.
Rone gave me a nice pep talk quietly on stage and got my confidence up. It worked. I got our NBA question and then when Uptown Balls missed theirs, I got that too to trigger the Fireball Heating Up icon. We started rolling and we knew that this tournament was our time.
Big Cat got in the zone and really put us over the top.
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His answers for Anchorman 2 and the Cotton Bowl we had no other suggestions for. Those type of pulls really got us in a good spot to finish the job and we did just that.
Big Cat took home the MVP, deservedly so.
Always the team player, he said he thought Rone deserved it. Rone played fantastic in both matches and I was just lucky to pull my weight in the Final. A great team win!
I'm looking forward to the New York show in a few weeks. If you want to re-live our title run in Philly to catapult us to the #1 ranked team in The Dozen, check them out here: