About the Show

The College Bowl Company is proud to present the newest version of its iconic, Emmy and Peabody Award winning intercollegiate battle of brains, College Bowl, as the Capital One College Bowl.

Capital One College Bowl airs on NBC. The 2022 season premiers Friday, September 9th at 8PM. Hosted by Peyton Manning, with his brother Cooper Manning serving as sidekick, the series challenges college students outside the classroom and puts their knowledge to the test as they compete for academic scholarships.

Richard Reid, President of the College Bowl Company, which owns the game, created and has developed all the modern iterations of College Bowl that appear around the world. The original version of College Bowl was created by his father, Don Reid. To develop Capital One College Bowl, Richard teamed with Universal Television Alternative Studio, a division of Universal Studio Group, Village Roadshow Television, Tough Lamb Media and its president, Mark Itkin, and Peyton and Cooper Manning.

The College Bowl formula of Toss-up and Bonus questions has been updated for Capital One College Bowl, but you’ll recognize all the elements that have made it a favorite and essential part of campus life broadcasting since the 1950s. Among the innovations for this version, football jargon has been incorporated into the game to compliment Peyton’s legendary persona. 

Participating colleges and universities compete in a custom elimination tournament.  Each match-up features two teams, each with three varsity scholars. In each round of the tournament, winning schools plus highest scoring wild card teams advance until it’s down to the two finalists. Every competitor in Capital One College Bowl wins scholarship money to put towards their schooling. The two final teams go head-to-head for $125,000 for each player to put towards their education.

In all, Capital One is awarding $1,000,000 in scholarships to participating varsity scholars. The winning school also takes home the Capital One College Bowl championship trophy, which will be prominently displayed on campus.

Over the decades, through participating sponsors, College Bowl and its sister programs have raised tens of millions of dollars of scholarships for students and institutional grants for their schools. In addition to College Bowl itself, our games include Honda Campus All-Star Challenge, the official academic team championship for America’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and University Challenge, now in its sixth decade in the UK and airing in prime time on BBC 2. Until recently, College Bowl also produced Africa Challenge, an international championship featuring schools from Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Malawi, Zambia, Ghana, Nigeria and Sierra Leone. There have been versions in Australia, New Zealand, India and more.

Over the years, the format has been customized for high school competitions and other segments of the community, such as different professions going head-to-head, sports stars representing their alma maters or pro teams, celebrities, alumni, international all-star matches and more. The College Bowl format is available for license around the world.

Since 1998, Peyton Manning has personally endowed 45 scholarships to the University of Tennessee, helping to support deserving students at his alma mater. His PeyBack Foundation has established 10 scholarships across eight different Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs).
Cooper, the oldest of the three Manning brothers, has earned national recognition for his humor and wit as host of "The Manning Hour" on "FOX NFL Sunday." 

Capital One has made a commitment of $1 million in combined grants for the Thurgood Marshall College Fund and The United Negro College Fund to support HBCUs and create pathways to greater opportunity for the graduates of these vital institutions. In addition, through the Capital One Cup, which recognizes excellence in collegiate athletics, Capital One has donated more than $4 million to student-athlete scholarship funds, half of which have gone to support women's athletics programs.

Capital One College Bowl is executive produced for NBC by Richard Reid, Peyton Manning, Cooper Manning, Eli Manning and Mark Itkin. Harry Friedman serves as showrunner for the series.