Transcript

Brogan is known for his pre-trivia motivational speeches, but he's never prepared one before. Below is a first for us in Trivia. Here is the Transcript of the speech:

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Let me start off, as I usually do, by thanking everyone for coming. I know it’s not an easy trip to get to the middle of bumble-cuss Wisconsin in the middle of cussing winter. And that becomes more and more true every year as our geographic center starts to wobble increasingly toward the east coast and the west coast, straying far from our midwestern roots. But for whatever crazy reason, you’re all here and I’m here and we’re getting ready to do this thing again.

Now, for those of you who have been at this for a while, you’ll probably think its odd that I have gone to the trouble to prepare these remarks, as my tradition is to hop up and spout a few rousing remarks; a cuss this or that and send us barreling into this 50 hour slog. And while I have certainly always fallen back on that approach in times of desperation, I have to admit to you all that every year I think to myself that this is going to be the year when I actually take the time to really think through what this weekend, this contest, and—most of all—what all of you really mean to me.

Most years, I just can’t get up enough enthusiasm to pull that off.

But this year is different. This is 2010. A chance for a record tenth win in a row. And I figured if that’s not sufficient motivation, then I just don’t have it in me.

I have to stop here for some facts to set this up right. By my count, we have 28 people playing trivia this year. Those 28 people represent 12 states (Wisconsin, Florida, Minnesota, Iowa, Washington, Illinois, Massachussetts, Tennessee, Texas, California, New York, New Jersey) and the district of Columbia. Using my, admittedly rough math skills, that’s better than 20% of the country’s states represented. We have won 9 in a row. 11 of the last 13, with 2 second place finishes sprinkled in there. By my count, this is the 14^th consecutive year that the Bank of Kaukauna has fielded a trivia team. It’s our fifteenth consecutive year if you count Sam, Jason, Shannon and I playing the contest out of my bedroom, and it’s my 17^th total year if you count the year I played with some folks at Lawrence and the sophomore debacle whereby Jason Maxham was introduced to my sister whilst dancing on my dad’s sub-woofer. This from the man who styles himself an audiophile.

Seventeen years. Holy cuss. I just turned 34 years old. I have been playing this game half my life. Let me put that in perspective. I did not know—but just looked up—the average length of first marriages in this country. It’s 7.8 years. And we’ve all been together twice that long. Which I think is definitive proof that married people should only be allowed to spend 50 hours together once a year. Preferably playing trivia.

When you think about it, it’s pretty remarkable that we all get together to do this thing. As we get older, our lives are increasingly full of stress and commitments. Vacation time is at a premium, and in the midst of the Great Recession, spending limited resources to go play a stupid game is crazy. Another fun fact: there are 8,765 and change hours in a year. We bill about 1800 of those to clients, which leaves 6,965 hours to do with as we please. Factor out an optimistic 8 hours of sleep a night (or, in Maxham’s case, 12 hours a night) and you have a little over 4,000 hours left. You’re about to devote 1.25% of your non-work, non-sleep life to trivia. The good news is that you’re going to make it up by not sleeping.

But it is remarkable that we keep doing this, and I am always surprised that we manage to convince as many folks as we do to play. Because contrary to popular opinion, this whole playing trivia all night thing actually sucks when you have jobs and kids and other cuss to deal with. I spend 8,715 hours a year dreading trivia. But I spend 50 hours a year loving it. Unfortunately, it’s the first 50 hours after it’s over. In all seriousness, though, you don’t play trivia for 50 hours of sheer fun. You play it for those handful of moments throughout the contest where you happen to know the answer to a question off the top of your head, or where you find a website that makes you lose it, or when you’re singing Africa at the top of your lungs.

I am at the point in my life where I now forget more things than I remember, but I can recall with vivid clarity the moments when I knew that some of you would be trivia lifers –

Joel – Chuck Norris

Mark – the top score on Pac Man

Kyle – smashed to pieces in the still of the night

Patty – the moment you said, “I do.”

And whether this is your first trivia contest or your 14^th, that’s what this contest is all about. The little moments where we forget ourselves, our lives, our jobs and focus on something so small, so minute, so trivial that we change profoundly, if imperceptibly. The next 50 hours are a free pass to slow down, answer a question every 5 minutes, meet some new people, bathe a little less, sleep a lot less and forget about Monday morning.

Now, if I’ve lured you all in with this quasi-new-age-love-thy-trivia-team cuss, snap out of it. Because I don’t want a single person in this room to forget this next bit. As much as we all love the kumbayas, it’s no accident that we’ve won this thing 9 times in a row. We don’t win through sheer force of goodness. We win by working harder, faster, smarter than every other team. Some years, that has translated into a hundred point or more advantage over the second place team. But last year we won by three questions.

Make no mistake. Three questions is not a victory. It’s a margin of error. If you aim for a three question advantage, you risk losing nine years of hard work not because somebody managed to find an answer to a Garuda, but because you were talking through a question. Or because nobody listened for our name and they won’t give us credit. With a margin that small, there is no error for mistake. We have to be 50 hours of perfect. We have to treat each and every question like a Garuda, like it is the question that will make the difference between winning and losing.

And that is my challenge to you this year. Can you answer every question as though it’s the one that makes the difference? Can each of you commit to answering, somehow, some way, the impossible question? Because if you can find a way to do that, we are going to win this thing. And better than that, we’re going to make it look like it wasn’t even close.

They are going to come at us hard. There is nothing they want more in the whole world than to end our streak right here. There is nothing they want more than to have me walk up for that second place trophy. And they think they have us figured out because all they need to do is answer three more questions right. Don’t give them that satisfaction. Don’t give them that satisfaction.

You are my friends, and you are my team, and for the next 50 hours we will live and eat and breathe and play as one unit. If you do that, we will make history. Now, let’s go do it.
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