It’s no wonder. Aside from being an avid Wheel of Fortune fan, Sullivan, a retired entrepreneur, is synonymous with Fordham sailing.

As an undergraduate, he was the varsity team captain from 1955 to 1957, when the Rams were a force in intercollegiate sailing. And in 2000, he helped relaunch the program as a club sport after it had been dormant at Fordham for nearly three decades. He’s been involved with the team ever since, first as a volunteer coach and now as a volunteer director, helping the Rams become—once again—among the best in the country.

Sullivan said his three main goals in auditioning for Wheel of Fortune this past summer were to “promote the sailing team on national television, to have fun, and to hopefully win enough to cover [his and his wife’s] travel expenses.”

He’s not allowed to reveal the outcome of the game until after the show airs, but he said he certainly achieved his first two goals.

He even wore his Fordham sailing tie (navy blue with a pattern of maroon Fordham burgees) for the taping. Though he was asked to change into a solid tie for the publicity photo seen above, Sullivan said that “minutes before I was to take my place behind the wheel, the assistant [producer] whispered to me, ‘We know how important it is to you. Wear your Fordham tie. It will be fine on television.’”

Sullivan will appear on the show as part of Wheel of Fortune’s annual Veterans Week. He was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Air Force in 1958, after graduating from Fordham, and stationed in Korea from January 1959 to February 1960.

Sullivan and his wife, Barbara, took a two-day trip to California this past August for the taping of the Veterans Week shows, which he describes as “the Hollywood equivalent of basic training.”

“It was an exhausting but exhilarating experience for a couple of senior citizens about to turn 79 years of age,” he said, “but we are glad we did it.”

Tune in to Wheel of Fortune at 7:30 p.m. EST on Thursday, November 12 to cheer on Joe Sullivan!

Friday, November 13 Update: Joe Sullivan played a great game on Thursday evening, and it was clear he had a lot of fun. He gave a shout-out to the Fordham Rams in his introduction and won almost $10,000 during the course of the game, putting him in second place and almost certainly covering his travel expenses.

Just two weeks after Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek announced his decision to donate $1 million to endow a scholarship for undergraduates at Fordham, Dennis Golin, FCLC ’13, won $31,999 on the popular quiz show.

Golin, who says he has “watched the show religiously” for years, actually avoided meeting Trebek when the TV host came to speak on campus in 2011. He was afraid he might be disqualified from becoming a contestant in the future. “I mean, what if we really hit it off?” he jokes. “Then it would be a conflict of interest to have me on the show.”

After finally meeting him on the set, Golin says Trebek is “a lovely guy who does his best to make you feel at ease.”

Golin took the initial online test to qualify for the show in February 2014, before auditioning live in Philadelphia. He attributes his success on the show to his love of factoids and Wikipedia articles, and his ability to convince himself he was simply playing along at home.

“I tried to imagine I was watching rather than playing, just to lessen the pressure of the cameras and the lights. At home there’s a level of comfort you can’t replicate during the real thing,” he says. “But I tried to imagine everything as Monopoly money, and that certainly helped take the pressure away.”

Golin currently works as a video editor at the Jewish Broadcasting Service. He also produces a late-night sketch-comedy show—with his former Fordham classmates Adam Hemmert and Andrew Scherer, both FCLC ’13—on Manhattan’s public access cable network.

Tune in to Jeopardy! tonight at 7 p.m. EST to cheer on Golin as he attempts a two-day victory!