We’re back after an extended hiatus and an increase in demand – at least for articles on Jeopardy. My next five selections include three who are practically gimmes at this point and two choices that may be considered more questionable, but who I will defend anyway.
Leonard Cooper
I originally wasn’t going to include Leonard as part of this grouping, as he isn’t superficially as great a player as some of the others. Indeed, I once considered his selection for the Jeopardy All-Stars more due to his going viral for a Final Jeopardy then for his actual quality as a player. But there are more reasons to select him than I actually thought before.
First of all, there is the fact that I believe a Teen Tournament winner should be among those selected to compete in a fortieth anniversary tournament. The Teen Tournament has a proud tradition of some of the very best Jeopardy champions in history, some of whom more than distinguished themselves in their Tournaments of Champions and other Tournaments. After the 2000 Tournament of Champions, Teen Tournament Winners have never been allowed to participate in those Tournaments something I have considered unfair.
Second, while much of Leonard’s play in his Teen Tournament was fluky, when he competed against a far superior group of players in the Jeopardy All-Star Games, his play was superior to several much better competitors. He knew the answer to a final Jeopardy that Julia Collins didn’t; he played better in his Jeopardy round then Seth Wilson, the winner of 12 games and he was more valuable to his Team, certainly in his first game, then Roger Craig was, something I could have never predicted at the beginning of the Tournament. That has to count for something.
And if we are going to give Jeopardy players credit for being media sensations as well as great players, then it’s hard to argue Leonard Cooper isn’t one. The response he gave in the Final Jeopardy that won him the Teen Tournament is one of the most famous in Jeopardy history and gave Alex one of his biggest laughs: “What is some guy at Normandy but I just won $75,000?” is such a good response that it even made us forget that he almost bungled the wager that could have made it a lie.
For those reasons, Leonard Cooper should be back. He’ll be great and he will be fun.
Colby Burnett
Burnett is one of the names on this list that is an inevitability. He’s not only one of the greatest Jeopardy performers in his original run but his work in each tournament he has appeared in just further cements his case.
A little history first: in 2011, Jeopardy created the Teachers Tournament, the natural resolution of more than a quarter century of teachers being among the best performers on Jeopardy. (Does it still exist or has it been supplemented by the Professors’ Tournament? We will see.) In any case, in November of 2012 Colby Burnett, a high school history teacher from Chicago, managed to win that tournament and $100,000. A good performance, but there weren’t many signs that it would be revolutionary.
The next February, in the 2013 Tournament of Champions Colby was facing some truly superb Jeopardy champions. I don’t know if anyone would have given him a chance of winning the Tournament; I know I didn’t. But Colby swept through the quarterfinals and semi-finals and utterly dominates his opponents in the two game final to become the only winner of Teachers Tournament – and one of only two special tournament winners, period – to win a Tournament of Champions. In getting to that point, he was the first player to win such a Tournament who had never lost a game he had played.
He was only getting started. In the Battle of the Decades, he squeaked by Celeste DiNucci to get to the quarter-finals, engaged in a major battle to get a wild card to the semi-final in the last quarterfinal match, and did battle with previous entries Roger Craig and Pam Mueller in that semi-final. He ended up losing, but managed to leave with $25,000.
When the Jeopardy All-Star Games took place in 2019, I expected to see Colby there. I was slightly stunned to see him as one of the captains over, say Roger Craig, but I knew he was a great player. He led a team that featured fellow competitor Pam Mueller to a wild card match and in a brilliant two game fight managed to get his team to the finals against ones led by Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter. The run ended there, but he ended up splitting $100,000 with his two teammates.
Colby is not just one of the best Jeopardy players in history: he’s also one of the most entertaining to watch play. There are a lot of anecdotes I could use to illustrate that, but I’ll settle for one: at the end of the second Final Jeopardy of the Finals of the All-Star Game, it was a given that Team Colby was going to finish in third place. He arranged the wager in Final Jeopardy so that his teams two day total was $24,601. When Alex pointed out the reference to Jean Valjean in Les Miserables, Colby said: “Do you hear the people sing?” And there were huge laughs. Colby Burnett will be back. It is inevitable.
Keith Whitener
Some Jeopardy champions are great forever. Others achieve greatness and are often unduly forgotten. Keith Whitener, sadly, is one of the latter. Which isn’t fair.
Keith managed to win seven games and just under $150,000 in the fall of 2012. This should have gotten more attention had it not come in a period where several great Jeopardy champions had runs within a few days of each other - Paul Nelson, the player who beat Keith won five games, and his run was interrupted by Colby Burnett.
Then Keith got to the Tournament of Champions that February, fought through a tough quarterfinal to win. He faced off against Jason Keller, who won nine games and over $213,000. Jason was killing him for the Jeopardy round, and in Double Jeopardy Keith utterly destroyed him. Then came the Finals where he faced off against Colby Burnett – and he was utterly destroyed, finishing a distant second (but taking home $100,000)
Then came the Battle of the Decades where he went into a deep hole early, climbed out of it by the end of the Jeopardy round and ended up in a distant third.
Keith has the record of a great Jeopardy player who just brushed greatness several times over the course of little more than two years. He has been forgotten by Jeopardy ever since. I think he is entitled to return.
Ben Ingram
Usually being the winner of a Tournament of Champions is enough to signify you as one of the great players in Jeopardy history. But for Ben Ingram, there’s actually a better reason.
In the spring of 2013, Ben won eight games and just over $176,000 – impressive numbers by any standards. By the time he participated in the Tournament of Champions the following November, it was a whole new world. The controversial Arthur Chu had become the first player since David Madden to win more than ten games by winning eleven and just under $300,000. Less than a month after his run ended, Julia Collins began hers (which you probably know about already and I’ll go into more detail about below). Ben was now barely the fourth best player that year.
But like Julia and Arthur, he managed to qualify for that year’s finals. And while the two of them managed to mostly outplay him in the first game, he decided to go for broke in Final Jeopardy and it worked out for him spectacularly. Game 1 ended with him holding a $10,000 lead over Arthur his nearest opponent. And though he struggled in Game 2, he managed to hold out to win the Tournament of Champions after another tough Final Jeopardy.
Julia Collins held no ill will and the two became close friends afterwards. So much so that when the time came to choose teammates for the All-Star Games, Captain Julia made Ben her first choice. He had the tough job of going up against Ken Jennings and Austin Rogers in their first game, but he did well against tough odds. The fact that the team was the first eliminated was not his fault.
Any Tournament of Champions winner always gets asked back for any future Tournament so we will almost certainly see Ben. It’ll be interesting to see how he plays on his own.
Julia Collins
After the triumphs of Amy Schneider and Mattea Roach this year, as well as the impressive runs of Matt Amodio and James Holzhauer, Julia Collins’ place in Jeopardy history has changed immense from where it was just three years ago. So it’s worth remembering where she was before.
In April and May of 2014, while the Finals of the Battle of the Decades were taking place, Julia Collins was making history. First she surpassed Stephanie Jass for the most games won by a female contestant when she won eight games, then she passed Larissa Kelly for most money won by a female contestant, and then she finally got past David Madden for second place all time for most games won by a Jeopardy champion. She won 20 games and $428,100. Julia was one of the only Jeopardy players in history to signify just how much this meant to her. When the 2014 Tournament of Champions took place that November, she listed her job description as a ’20-game Jeopardy champion.” Some might consider that a sign of ego; I’m slightly stunned no Jeopardy winner has ever done it before.
Like so many other great Jeopardy champions, Julia has not had the best luck in Tournaments. She managed to make it to the finals of the 2014 Tournament, but it took more work than her two opponents – she qualified via wildcard and was lucky to win her semi-final. And while she fought hard against Ben Ingram and Arthur Chu in the finals, bad luck in Game 2 met that by Final Jeopardy she was only competing for second place. She ended up finishing third and winning $50,000.
Julia is a good sport and ended up becoming close personal friends with the champion who had defeated her, and as I mentioned above, selected him to play with her when she was named a captain in the Jeopardy All-Star Games. But a combination of bad luck in Final Jeopardy of Game 1 and having to compete against Ken Jennings would end up meaning that her team would be the first to be eliminated in those game.
Given that she has fallen from second to sixth on the list of most games won by a Jeopardy champion – three players passed her this past season – one could see Julia’s luster being dimmed slightly. I have no doubt when she returns she will demonstrate to this new group of winners how good she is.
To Be Continued…
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