Colin Sullivan, junior physical education major, sent in a video of his Wild and Wacky talent of balancing things on his chin into a contest for the show ‘Live with Regis and Kelly.’ After winning his category, he will move on closer to winning the ultimate prize.

Q: What is the contest?

A: The contest is with the morning talk show “Live with Regis Philbin and Kelly Ripa.” They were looking for Wild and Wacky talents, so I sent in a video of my talent – balancing things on my chin. This was featured in the [Northern] Star last year as a “Monday With,” and I was in the paper again after I appeared on “The Ellen Degeneres Show” balancing my trademark 8-foot ladder. The basic outline of the contest is that they took all the videos they liked and put them into categories. Each weekday from Aug. 23 to Sept. 3, they showed two categories a day to be voted on. This week, they’ve been announcing the winners of each of those categories who are taking home $2,500. I found out on the show this morning that I won my category and now move onto the final round. This is where I need the help of the Star and NIU’s student body. I need as many votes as I can get on my video by Monday morning to win the grand prize of $20,000 and a lifetime supply of Trident chewing gum.

Q: What are you hoping to get out of this experience?

A: I’m hoping to walk away from this roughly $25,000 richer and with a lot of gum. I could really use the money towards school and stuff. Plus, being on another TV show is pretty sweet.

Q: What are you most excited for regarding this contest?

A: I’m just excited to see that so many people have voted for me and liked my video that I win this grandest of prizes. It’s a nationwide contest, so to say I can come out number one would be pretty cool. “The Ellen Show” thing wasn’t as much of a contest since I just sent a video in. This has to be voted on and seen by the entire country. I’d be pretty excited to win that prize, too.

Q: What have your friends and family said about you being involved with the contest?

A: My friends and family have been awesome to this point. Between a Facebook group, e-mails, texts, word of mouth, the news has really gotten around. I only had 24 hours to accumulate votes last round, so to have three days should work out even better for me. Since I did the whole Ellen show thing, and even had two videos of mine on ESPN’s “SportsNation”, people just kind of shake their heads and think ‘What’s Colin going to do next?’ I guess.

Q: Anything else you want to add?

A: That’s a lot of the deal. The Facebook group will be sending information about how to vote each day this weekend. You just have to search ‘Vote for Colin Sullivan’ and it should pop up in the search bar. To vote, people need to go to www.livewithregisandkelly.com. From there, they’ll have a box about the contest to click on. To go through the voting, they ask you to sign into the site. I need to stress that signing up is completely free. You can opt out of receiving any e-mails or snail mail. It costs nothing, you don’t have to get a verification e-mail to proceed, anything like that. Once you sign in, it takes you right back to the voting page. The contest rules say one username can vote once per day. You can, however, make more usernames and vote with them. I’ve made like 10 or so myself, and I plan to make more, that’s how easy it is. From there, my video should be on the site to vote for.