Rivalry, competition for Penn Sporcle players

Penn may be fighting for top rankings in many sports, but if Quakers want to be number one in every endeavor, it’s time for students to put down homework and find their way to Sporcle.com.

Total points achieved on Sporcle by Penn students consistently place the University on the site’s top 25 college rankings. Penn is also consistently the highest Ivy, according to the site.

Ian Henry, a Sporcle spokesman, described the website as “a social gaming company that offers short trivia and educational games.”

Since November, Sporcle ranks college standings, based on “visits, games played, page views” for those who list colleges in their profiles pages, Sporcle Vice President of Products Derek Pharr said.

Pharr is in charge of content, quality and customer service for Sporcle. He said the college ranking system was a way to take advantage of the pre-existing “rich rivalry between colleges.” As he sees it, the “passion people feel” for Sporcle allows rivalries that normally find their outlet in sports competitions to come into a new arena. “We’ve tapped into something that is already existing,” Pharr said.

Since the inception of the college ranking system, more people have begun creating profiles through Sporcle, Pharr said. College sophomore Sarah Gutman said that she joined the site “specifically so that [she] could sign up for Penn.”

Representing her school isn’t the only reason that Gutman enjoyed Sporcling. “I have always liked trivia-type things,” she said. Sporcle also offered a “great way to procrastinate from doing work [and] unwind,” she added.

“It’s a fun and nice reminder that even if I don’t know the answer to an exam or homework question, at least I know some things, even if they are completely trivial and useless,” Gutman explained.

For others, school spirit is not at all a motivating factor behind the site.

“It’s more about learning things and having fun,” Wharton and College sophomore Neena Bitritto-Garg said. Bitritto-Garg does not have a profile and finds that limited time in college prevents her from visiting the site as often as she did in high school.

“If I had more time I’d go on more,” Bitritto-Garg said.

When Gutman was playing regularly last year, Penn was in the top 10, she said. But winning at Sporcle doesn’t necessarily translate to intelligence. “It shows how much people are procrastinating,” Gutman said. She frequently sees students on Sporcle during lecture or during homework hours, as she did with her hallmates as a freshman.

But now Penn has dropped to 13, falling behind Michigan, Ohio State, Penn State, North Carolina and other large, and often rivalry-driven, schools.

“It’s a little sad to see Penn dropping so far in the rankings,” Gutman said. “There’s no excuse for us not to be in the top 10 – or the top five.”

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