Sunday, January 15, 2023

Jeopardy Announces Its 'First' Prime Time Masters Tournament: We Didn't (Dare) Ask for It But Fans Like Me Are Glad We're Getting It

 

 

In the summer of 1990, only six years after the new version of Jeopardy debuted, Super Jeopardy premiered on Saturdays nights. The format was unlike anything Jeopardy fans had seen before. 35 former Jeopardy champions from the previous six seasons (as well as the top winner from the Art Fleming incarnation) competed in a unique tournament format. Nine quarterfinals with four players each unfolded over a series of weeks. All the matches were played for points, not dollars. The Jeopardy round had 200 to 1000 points apiece, while Double Jeopardy had totals of 500 to 2500 apiece. After three quarterfinal matches, a semi-final was played involved the previous three winners, and after twelve weeks the tournament ended in a one-game final for a quarter of a million dollars, which was eventually won by Bruce Seymour, a four day winner from 1988.

The original plan was for this to be a regular event; in the final episode, Alex Trebek implied as much as he said goodbye. But the ratings were not as high as anticipated (putting game shows at the center of prime time would not become a ratings success until Who Wants to be a Millionaire at the end of the decade) and the fans of the original series didn’t turn out for it. As a result,  Super Jeopardy was cancelled and has more or less been expunged from the record of the show in general: while many of the competitors in this tournament have appeared in future tournaments of the original series, their appearances on Super Jeopardy were never considered ‘canon’ the same way. (Bob Verini, who finished second and received $100,000, never had his winning on this show added officially to his overall total. A decade after the fact, Robin Carroll was considered the highest money winner in Jeopardy history with just under $214,000, even though Bob Verini had won over $245,000.)

Jeopardy would not attempt a similar tournament until thirty years later when Ken Jennings, Brad Rutter and James Holzhauer competed in the Greatest of All Time match up. While considered an event series, one can’t help but think it was done as much to pay tribute to the ailing Alex Trebek (who died of cancer that November) then these three great players. Since Ken Jennings and Mayim Bialik took over the job of hosting in the fall of 2021, there has been a slow but steady movement towards prime-time tournaments, with a College Championship and Celebrity Tournaments being held this past fall. And with the continued success of these and the show in general, the producers began dropping the idea that a ‘masters’ tournament was being planned.

Earlier this week, the plans seem to have been finalized. Sometime in 2023 (the date is not yet known) six of the ‘greatest Jeopardy players’ of all time will face off in what is billed as ‘a champion league’ style event that Jennings will host. Should it be successful, there is considerable discussion about making it a regular thing. And given who has been chosen to participate in the initial tournament, its hard to argue that there isn’t already anticipation – and a little controversy.

Clearly wanting to start with the champions freshest in most fans minds, all but one of the participants is from the last Tournament of Champions. Even if that were a mitigating factor, it’s pretty clear that three of them would be among the first picks anywhere. Matt Amodio, Amy Schneider, and Mattea Roach, who punched their tickets on the greatest of all time list long before the Tournament actually happened.

While some might argue for the presence of Ryan Long or Jonathan Fisher on this list, given the eventual results of this fall’s tournament, it’s hard to argue the two other players don’t deserve it. Andrew He and Sam Buttrey are the two finalists in the hard-fought battle that Amy Schneider eventually ended up winning. Andrew, as we all remember kept fighting her clue for clue pretty much from the beginning of the final to the end, and Sam Buttrey spent the final (and pretty much the whole tournament) making us marvel as it brilliant play and charming us with his banter with Ken throughout. Throw in the fact that Andrew crushed Mattea in his semi-final victory and Sam managed to beat Matt in his, one would be hard pressed to argue they haven’t earned their play here.

No one questions the ability of the final participant: James Holzhauer. Both Amy and Matt managed to pass him in number of games won in their impressive original runs, though neither came anywhere close to getting past his money won total on the all-time Jeopardy leader board. (Though let’s not make light of the fact that each managed to win almost 1.5 million dollars.) With Jennings have retired from game play after his victory in the Greatest of all Time Tournament, Holzhauer is the all-time money winner in their original run among active players. He also managed to win a Tournament of Champions, something Jennings never did. While some might very well want to see Brad Rutter, still the show’s all-time money winner (much of it earned in tournaments where he defeated Jennings), few would argue that Holzhauer shouldn’t be the first one called upon in this tournament. (Besides, I have a hunch we’ll be seeing Brad soon enough, one way or the other.)

As you’d expect, not everybody is thrilled about this first list – including some Jeopardy champions. Sam Kavanaugh, who ended up winning the 2021 Tournament of Champions, expressed disappointment about it on Twitter. The general reaction by fans of this exclusion is less anger than it is sympathy and understanding for the producers. (Though this wasn’t always expressed kindly; one fan had to mention that he had to Google Sam in order to remember who he was) The overall reaction was basically either, Jeopardy needed to go with the most familiar names in its first one of these events (accurate) and for Sam to cheer up, he’ll be back on the stage soon enough (likely true)

Some of the participants themselves are taking this with typical modesty – Matt Amodio’s initial reaction on Twitter was: “I can’t wait to see who finishes second to James Holzhauer.” Naturally, another inclined fan said: “I can’t wait to see who finishes third to Matt Amodio.”  This kind of attitude is not surprising from Jeopardy champions who generally recognize greatness when they see it and have a history of camaraderie among them. They will try their hardest to crush each other in gameplay but will usually be perfectly nice to each other everywhere else.

We still don’t know what kind of tournament we’re going to end up seeing, or how it will work with six players, which is an odd number for any Jeopardy tournament. My working theory is that it will follow a pattern similar to the Jeopardy All-Star Games in which there will be two initial matches (I don’t know yet how many games will be in any of the matches) in which the winners will advance to the finals automatically; there will be a wild-card match among the three high-scorer among non-winner and then a final match. What I do know is that this is the kind of tournament I look forward to from Jeopardy on a regular basis and have gotten in some form every few years for the last twenty-one of them. The fact that we are having one such tournament in prime-time makes my pleasure all the sweeter as hopefully a larger audience will get to witness what the rest of America has found over the last few years. Hell, even if the only people who watch this tournament are Jeopardy fans, I think this will be a ratings success for ABC, given that the most recent numbers for the show in the last few weeks have been between nine and ten million viewers which these days on broadcast TV is the equivalent of ratings gold.

Hopefully, this will be the kind of success that leads to this becoming a regular thing for years to come. It’s not like Jeopardy has a shortage of great players to choose from, even if you want to limit it to the so-called Super-champions, you could go for a while. There are alterations of format that could be considered as well: those involving only Tournament of Champions winners, those involving slightly older champions playing against each other. My only desire is that even if this kind of tournament is successful, it will not stop the regular show from doing similar events in the syndicated version. (Those of you who read my column may remember my predictions involving what they might do for their fortieth season, which is now just a few months away. Quite a few people on that list are in the first set of participants.)

Well, we’ll see how its planned out and when it’s going to happen, and while we wait, it’s not like there aren’t more special tournament still ahead. In a few days, I’ll get to the one that’s fast approaching.

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