In the United States, 18-year-olds are considered adults, legally allowed to vote, join the military, get married, and buy cigarettes and lottery tickets.
They can also apply to be on game shows.
When Logan Cole, a junior theater arts major at the University, turned 18, he applied to be on “Wheel of Fortune” through the show’s Web site and then promptly forgot about it.
A year and a half later, the show contacted him and offered him an audition at a Portland hotel.
Another 14 months later, he won $38,300 and a trip for two to Mazatlán, Mexico, on the show’s College Week.
“We filmed a whole week in a day,” explained Cole, who was instructed to wear a University sweatshirt with no zippers, pockets or hood. “We did six episodes in about a six-hour time period.”
Getting on “Wheel of Fortune” is difficult. People typically apply through the Wheelmobile, a Winnebago which travels around the country recruiting contestants. Cole’s appearance on the show, the odds of which he compared to finding “a needle in a haystack that’s been set on fire,” was even more of a longshot, as he applied through the show’s Web site and was randomly selected to audition.
“We have literally 10,000 people in our database trying to get auditions,” said “Wheel of Fortune” Contestant Executive Gary O’Brien in a phone interview from Culver City, Calif.
O’Brien said good contestants are charismatic and able to work under pressure.
“We look for a good, strong presence,” he said. “We call it ‘having the juice.’”
Cole, a longtime “Wheel of Fortune” watcher, said there were aspects of the show that surprised him as a participant, such as the set’s relatively small size.
“I had no idea the wheel was so heavy,” he added. “I thought it was a light piece of cardboard.”
There was also the confidentiality agreement, which is why Cole opted not to bring a guest to the taping.
“I didn’t want to be accountable for anyone else,” he said. “If word got back to the studio that we talked about the show, we’d be stripped of everything we won. If I talked about what anyone else won, they’d be stripped of everything and I’d be sued.”
Unlike “Jeopardy,” “Wheel of Fortune” champions don’t continue to appear on the show. There were 19 contestants, three for each episode plus one alternate.
Cole’s episode – which was filmed in Culver City in September – aired two weeks ago.
“It was very exciting,” said John Schmor, head of the theater arts department. “A lot of people got together to watch the show as kind of an excuse to have a party.”
Schmor said it was similar to when Joe Doyle, a former University student in the department, appeared on VH1’s “The Pick-Up Artist” this summer. On “The Pick-Up Artist,” contestants competed to become “ladies’ men” under the tutelage of “master pick-up artist” Mystery. Doyle came in third.
Schmor was excited to see his department represented on television.
“I can’t imagine someone I’d rather see do that well and have that much fun,” he said.
Cole, who faced students from the University of Southern California and Arizona State University, won the show by solving the final puzzle, “itching to go,” almost instantaneously.
“After the cameras went down, I actually sat at the bottom of the wheel in disbelief that I just pursed almost $39,000,” he said. “That amount of money is not real to me. I’m an actor; that’s retirement!”
Cole plans to use his winnings, which he expects to receive in January, on investments, school and studying abroad in London.
He said that while winning the money was great, the experience – meeting Pat Sajak and Vanna White, making a bunch of new friends from among the other contestants, and appearing on a show he grew up watching – was worth so much more.
“Even if it was just for Monopoly money, it would have been worth it,” Cole said.
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