Freshman Wins Lamborghini on MTV's TRL

On Nov. 3, Lubin freshman Grant Cassata and a few of his friends took part in a Total Request Live (TRL) contest on MTV, where Cassata won a Lamborghini Gallardo.

Cassata was first informed about the contest by his resident advisor in Maria's Tower who was looking for students interested in video games , in particular those who played Need for Speed. Cassata and his friends applied and were asked to play Need for Speed Carbon (NFS: Carbon) to win a yellow Lamborghini Gallardo.

The contest was sponsored by EA Sports and promoted by TRL. The idea was to promote a new version of Need for Speed to the fans. TRL choose four contestants out of many who wanted to play.

Grant Cassata, Alishia Sidhu and Heather Michelle Castillo, all University students, were selected to play. A fourth selected participant was from a different school.

TRL claims the contestants were picked at random as long as they knew the basic skills of the game.

Sidhu and Cassata went into finals. Their match was recorded at the TRL studio live after which Cassata was determined as the winner.

"It is awesome! I still cannot believe I won," Cassata said.

However, Cassata chose not to keep the car to drive. After thinking it over, Cassata decided to sell the car and invest it into stock holds, properties and bonds with a hope to invest it into his own business in the future.

"I am a business major at Pace, and this [opportunity] is giving me a start in my future career," Cassata said. "The best investment is to invest in myself."

He also explained that keeping the car is "close to impossible" due to high taxes for such a vehicle. Cassata cannot drive the car due to lack of insurance policy on the car, which he said costs a large amount of money.

Although Cassata will not have the chance to enjoy his prize for long, he did gain something from the experience.

Cassata said he perceived that others viewed him differently. "Suddenly I was getting ten to twenty new friend requests on Facebook per day." Friends that have not contacted Cassata in a while also suddenly "reappeared." He almost regretted that his friends feel "ignored", but at the same time felt like a celebrity himself.

According to Cassata, some forums were created to "hate the kid who won the yellow Lamborghini," in which members discussed how the game was unfair and "anybody could have played better."