"Before becoming the comic book superhero the Incredible Hulk Bruce Banner was a prominent what? A) Reporter, B) Professor, C) Lawyer, D) Scientist."
Anyone with remedial comic book knowledge would know Banner was a scientist. But when Who Wants to be a Millionaire host Meredith Vieira asks the question today at 4 p.m. on WUSA 9, the only person who needs to know the answer is senior criminology and criminal justice major John O'Connor.
O'Connor, whose appearance on the syndicated game show was taped in September, breezed through the first five questions, reaching the $1,000 level during an episode that aired last Friday. He will continue with the $2,000 question in today's episode.
Whether he correctly answered this question and, more importantly, how close he came to the million-dollar grand prize is a secret he has kept for more than six months. The show's producers told O'Connor that if they find out he told anyone about his winnings before the show airs, he will be stripped of his money.
"I couldn't even tell my own mother. She wants to kill me," said O'Connor, who will not receive his check - however much it is - until after the show airs.
His roommate and coworker, Michael Coon, tried in vain to get O'Connor to talk.
"I've been begging him to tell me, but he hasn't told me yet," said Coon, a business administration student at the Universities at Shady Grove. "Monday we'll find out."
The process that culminates Monday took years to develop, beginning when O'Connor was in high school and was a big fan of Who Wants to be a Millionaire, then a number-one rated ABC primetime success hosted by Regis Philbin.
O'Connor watched his father unsuccessfully attempt to become a contestant on the show, and a few years later, he decided to give it a try himself.
"Being on a game show has always been a dream of his," said Blair Morris, O'Connor's girlfriend, who said he spoke of his Millionaire aspirations the first time they went out.
O'Connor's father only had to take a quick multiple choice test over the phone, but the new application process required O'Connor to go to New York and wait outside the studio in the hopes of getting tickets to a taping. Before he was admitted to the audience, he filled out a multiple choice test given to anyone interested in becoming a contestant.
O'Connor said he didn't think he did well on the test, but he credited his personality as a reason the producers selected him as one of ten finalists to have a chance at being a contestant at a later taping.
"I realized that being in the studio, there are cameras all over the place. I thought that if I was acting crazy, somebody in the control room might notice that," O'Connor said.
Even after O'Connor was selected, he said producers told him he might have to wait two to three years to hear back from them as to when he would appear on the show. But last September, just ten months after his appearance in the audience, he got the call and was told that just 25 days later he would be in the hot seat.
Immediately after receiving the call, O'Connor, with Coon's help, began his training regimen.
"We just watched game shows all the time trying to get him ready," said Coon. "He does crosswords all the time. He's probably one of the smartest guys I know. He can memorize anything on a map."
O'Connor agreed the hours he's spent watching game shows prepared him.
"I watch Jeopardy! all the time with my girlfriend and she kind of laughs at me because I know all these random questions," O'Connor said. "I know a lot of stuff, but you can never know everything. I went to Barnes and Noble and bought a trivia book and tried to cram as much as I could before I went up there."
Morris said all his training paid off when the cameras started rolling.
"John is extremely good at trivia, so he was flying through questions before I could even think of the answer," said Morris, who sat in the studio audience during the episode's taping.
O'Connor, who had never been on television before, said he will always cherish the experience.
"I was pretty relaxed all day, but when I sat down on that seat I was pretty nervous," he recalled after watching Friday's episode. "I could tell when I saw myself on TV that I was nervous. I was smiling from ear to ear. It was almost an out-of-body experience."
To anyone watching, the smiles were certainly there, but the nerves were not as apparent. When Vieira asked the $500 question, "An atom, an oil derrick, a windmill and a dynamo are all depicted on the official seal of which U.S. Department? A) Justice, B) Energy, C) Education, D) Treasury," O'Connor calmly responded: "Let's see, they're all sources of energy, so I'm gonna go with B, energy. Final answer."
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