Andy Warhol’s 15 minutes of fame were no match for reality television.
And so it could be said that the latest spotlight will spend a good part of 60 minutes shining on a local former high school football star.
Tim Rambow, a 32-year-old Mariner High School graduate who now runs an Interstate Batteries store in Southern California, will be one of 24 contestants to appear in tonight’s episode of the ABC television show “Wipeout.” The show pits contestants against a watery obstacle course. The best time wins.
“It was just fun to have the experience,” said Rambow, who will be competing for the $50,000 prize.
Rambow plans to watch the show at a gathering for friends and family at his Fontana, Calif., home. He said he’s the only one who knows whether or not he wins — by contract, all he is allowed to reveal is that he made it to the final three — so there will be plenty of suspense during the hour-long show.
It’s a rare appearance in front of TV cameras for Rambow, who played quarterback at Mariner High and for a year in community college. While former high school teammates Riall Johnson and Lamont Brightful went on to play in the National Football League, Rambow never really got to chase his NFL dream.
He says he was recruited by multiple Pac-10 schools but turned them down to go on a church mission. A member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Rambow followed his 1997 graduation from Mariner with a mission in Brazil. When he returned, he played a year of football at Hutchinson Community College before returning home, meeting his current wife and starting a family in California.
In a sense, this is Rambow’s chance at glory.
“You could say that,” he said Monday, “but there’s nothing like that experience of playing football and going out there with your teammates.”
Rambow said he tried out for the show simply because a friend was looking for someone to come along to the open audition at a nearby ESPN Zone restaurant. About 500 people were at the audition, which included trivia questions in rapid-fire succession.
“It’s a pretty crazy show,” Rambow said of the audition. “These people are nuts.”
The television show involves challenges that test a player’s mental and physical ability and often end in crash landings — thus, the game show’s title.
Rambow admits that his high school background as a quarterback, basketball player and baseball player helped him on the show.
“In the obstacle course, you had to be pretty agile and swift on your feet,” he said. “Things are coming at you; things are flying by. It definitely helped me being athletic and having played sports in high school.”
Fourteen years after his high school graduation, Rambow will finally get to show off some of his athletic skills on national television.
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