My History With Jeopardy Super-Tournaments, Part 2: The Million Dollar Masters And The Rise of Brad Rutter

 

At the time of the Million Dollar Masters, I was roughly a month away from graduating from college. Did I view the former as a more significant event at the time? I honestly can say. I can say it was a watershed for both the show and me as a viewer of it.

I’m not sure why Jeopardy chose to have its first Million Dollar Tournament in its eighteenth season rather than some other significant time such as the twentieth. All I know that they certainly treated like a historic event – the Tournament took place in Radio City Music Hall before a crowd of over five thousand people.  As a result the applause when a contestant hit a Daily Double or responded correctly to Final Jeopardy was considerably louder. It was to the credit of the fifteen former champions that they handled this extra pressure as well as they did, though on occasion a few of them would briefly play to the audience.

At this point in my career on Jeopardy I was very familiar with most of the fifteen competitors. I initially questioned why some of them had been invited (Bob Harris, in his quintessential book Prisoner of Trebekestan admitted that he had the same qualms about being invited back) but I did understand the basically logic when it came to makeup. One might want to invite every Tournament of Champions winner, but that would have made the show verry male heavy - to that point only two women Rachael Schwartz in 1994 and Robin Carroll in 2000 had won the Tournament of Champions. (Both participated in the Tournament.) While I realized that some of those invited might not have been my first choice, I was familiar with their records over the last decade to know that they were more than qualified and of the few that had competed before my watching the show I did not doubt their qualifications.

Indeed there was only one contestant who I basically thought had earned his invitation purely because he was the winner of the most recent Tournament of Champions. And I’ll admit when I looked at some of the players who were in that Tournament, I honestly did not think that Brad Rutter would even manage to make it into the finals, much less win the million dollars at stake.

Considering that Brad Rutter has now won more money than any contestant in Jeopardy history, that observation must seem ridiculous in hindsight. But even by the standards set in the five game limit, pre-doubled dollar figures era (the dollar figures would be officially doubled three weeks after Brad triumphed in the 2001 Tournament of Champions) Brad was not an impressive player even by the standards of that year. In five games Brad had won $55,102 in his initial appearance. Of the fourteen competitors who had qualified in regular play, Brad ranked ninth in money won (and one of those players had only won four games) Nor had he played particularly dominantly in his eventual victory: in that point in watching the show, I’d already seen three players win Tournaments of Champions in far more impressive fashion. I’m not sure if I had any favorites as the Tournament started; I do know Brad wasn’t one of them.

In his quarterfinal match, Brad managed to defeat Claudia Perry (who’d won four games and had been a semi-finalist in the 1998 Tournament of Champions) and Kate Waits (who’d had the same kind of record ten years earlier). It was a hard-earned victory, but not a particularly dominant one. I was frankly more impressed by Bob Verini, who had won his quarterfinal match in an impressive runaway over two players who had impressed me immensely in their initial runs: Leslie Shannon, who I had remembered from the 1993 Tournament of Champions and Eddie Timanus, whose five wins were overshadowed by the fact that he was completely blind. Bob had won the 1987 Tournament of Champions, which impressed me more – he had not competed on the show in nearly fifteen years and one of the players he thrashed had participated on the show just two years earlier.

In the semi-final matches Brad was fairly dominant against Leslie Frates (who I mentioned before) and India Cooper (one of the first five time winners I’d ever seen). However, near the end of the semi-final match Leslie Frates gambled on a Daily Double and when it paid off took the lead, which she managed to hold until Double Jeopardy ended. All three contestant knew the correct response to Final Jeopardy – it was only because Brad wagered anything that he had ended up becoming a finalist.  He had been fairly impressive but so had Bob and Eric Newhouse, a former Teen Tournament winner who had been remarkable in his semi-final win. Honestly I thought all three players were evenly matched going into the two-game final.

I think at this point I need to remark that, to this point in watching the show, the clues in this Tournament were among the most difficult I had encountered to this date. By this point I had improved significantly as a player (as you would think considering I was becoming more educated and familiar with the show quirks) but I was still having trouble when it came to the clues in the Tournament of Champions. For the Million Dollar Masters, however, the writers clearly upped their game significantly and where as in a Tournament of Champions I could occasionally finish third or second compared to the players, I spent most of this tournament lucky to be in a comfortable third by the end of Double Jeopardy. I did respond correctly on more than few Final Jeopardy during the ten games that were played – I believe I knew the response to six of them at the time – but when it came to so many of the categories in play, the champions involved would frequently leave me – and doubtless countless viewers at home – in awe of just how bright these players were. At that point there were occasions when I could get a response correct that would stump the contestants. That never happened during the Million Dollar Masters and often the $200 and $400 clues could baffle me. I’d often watched the show and been impressed by the players; this tournament, like so many others in the future, was among those that made me feel like a weed among a forest.

All of which is a roundabout way of saying that by the time the first game of the finals had aired, I was generally feeling worn out. Nor did I feel remarkably better going through the first game of the finals: during the Jeopardy round the only category where I managed to do well in was RECENT FILMS and categories such as BRITISH ROYALTY and ‘GRAND’ CENTRAL had just made me feel pathetic. Nor did Double Jeopardy make me feel notably better: the only category I did well in that whole round was BALLET where I somehow managed to get four out of five clues right. I don’t know how in a category such as NEAR EAST ANCIENT HISTORY I knew that there was a Persian king called Darius and in a category called GRAMMAR SCHOOL I remembered just how much I loathed the subject back then.

I can’t recall how much money I had at the end of Double Jeopardy on Day 1 – a kind guess would be somewhere between $9000 and $10,000 and I felt so lucky to be ahead of Eric Newhouse who had $7600.

The Final Jeopardy category had to do with WORD HISTORIES. “In old philosophy this 12-letter word referred to a fifth substance, superior to earth, air, fire or water.” I don’t remember if I even wrote anything down and I felt slightly better that these three superb players didn’t have a clue either. The fact that Brad went into Game 2 with $11,800 to Bob’s $6800 while Eric had nothing (he lost everything in Final Jeopardy) did little to make me think Brad would win the tournament the next day. He had played well throughout (indeed, a later analysis showed he managed to get 26 correct answers, as many as his two opponents combined) but he had not looked invincible.

My opinion did not change during the Jeopardy round of Game 2. In the Jeopardy round Eric did what he had to do to get out of the deficit he was in: he started quickly, bet everything on a Daily Double which he got right and quickly built a sizable lead. Despite Brad’s best efforts, he never truly got close to Eric and he was at $5600 to Eric’s $7200 while Bob had $2800. I remember doing slightly better in this round then I had in game 1 – I think I had roughly $5000 in front of me – but I hadn’t expected much.

In Double Jeopardy Bob very quickly took command by doing well  (as did I) in the category CIRCUS AND CARNIVAL CINEMA. I also did well in a category about WORLD LITERATURE (I was proud that I knew an answer about Indonesia that no one got right) but my highpoint of the round – and honestly the final – came on a critical Daily Double halfway through the round. Unfortunately back then (and today) I only count myself as correct if I was eligible for the clue and I had not gotten the previous clue correct.

The category was THEY’VE BEEN BENCHED. In the fashion of the writers, it was a category about the SUPREME COURT: “He resigned from the Supreme Court in 1916 to run for President and was reappointed in 1930 as Chief Justice.” Bob instantly said: “Who is William Howard Taft?” The audience was so sure he was right they started applauding and you can hear the shock when Alex tells them no that it was Charles Evans Hughes. (Hughes was the Republican candidate who narrowly lost to Woodrow Wilson in 1916, which is how I knew it.)

At the time Bob had a significant lead with $15,200 to Eric Newhouse’s $12,000. He lost $5200 on the clue and went into second place. He took it fairly well (he actually told the audience: “Hey, I’m surprised too” which understandably elicited laughter.) but then lost $1200 on the next clue. Immediately after Brad got two straight clues correct in HISTORY HODGEPODGE and went into the lead for the first time in Double Jeopardy. Not long after Bob found the other Daily Double in 4-SYLLABLE WORDS. At the time Bob had $10,400 and was just $2000 behind Brad.

In hindsight what happened next was a flashpoint in Jeopardy history and may illustrate why I may never truly understand the mindset of the Jeopardy champion. Bob paused, and said simply: “I came to play, I leaving with more than I started with, all of it.” There was a huge applause at this, and if it had worked out he would have earned it. In a weird way, the answer to the clue really summed up what I fought of this move:

“This adjective referring to a reversal of common sense comes from the Latin for ‘before behind.’ Bob hesitated for a long time and finally said he didn’t know. The correct response was ‘preposterous.”

To be clear, if Bob had wagered less money on this Daily Double there is no evidence it would have effected who the winner was. But at the time, it did have an affect on my view of Brad Rutter.

The Final Jeopardy category was VICE PRESIDENTS, and for the record I knew the correct response to the clue. This wasn’t special, so did all three players: “He was the only vice president to be elected to, & serve, 2 full terms as President.” The correct response was Thomas Jefferson. By what would be the narrowest of margins, Brad would become the winner of Jeopardy’s first ever million dollar tournament.

I’ll be honest, while I acknowledged the significance of this event, it did not fundamentally change my opinion of Brad. He might well now have won more money in Jeopardy history, but given what I’d witnessed, there was an argument he was also incredibly lucky. As anyone who watches Jeopardy for even a short time knows, luck has a lot to do with becoming a Jeopardy champion in the first place, and far too often is the deciding factor in winning a Jeopardy tournament. But there had just so many confluences of events that I still thought he had just gotten lucky. I’ll also confess the fact that Brad was very young at the time of the Million Dollar Masters – he was 24 in 2002 – may have prejudiced me against him as well as the fact that he had been the most recent winner among the fifteen people invited.

What may have been more critical was how that tournament affected how I viewed Jeopardy. The following summer during the period Jeopardy traditionally shows reruns of prior tournaments, they would rebroadcast the Million Dollar Masters. I recorded every single episode on VHS.

I was unaware that when the new season began a few weeks later, Jeopardy was about to make arguably the most critical rule change in its history: at the start of the 2003-2004 season, Jeopardy champions would be allowed to win until they were defeated: the five game limit was dead.

In my next article I will deal with the arrival of Ken Jennings and the tournament that would follow that had by far the most significant effect on how I regarded Jeopardy.