As I made very clear when
I spent much of the month of May detailing every match, I was in awe of the inaugural
Jeopardy Masters Tournament. It is pretty clear that I was not alone in that
conception: the first version of the tournament averaged more than seven million
viewers per episode and was nominated by the Hollywood Critics Association for
Best Game Show.
While I’m hoping that we
still get a special tournament to commemorate Jeopardy’s 40th season,
I have to say that if this becomes the equivalent of a yearly super-tournament
I would be far from displeased. At the end of the final episode Ken and Mattea
Roach, who finished second that by doing so they had automatically qualified to
participate next year. Few who saw them play both in that tournament and in
their previous appearances could argue that they hadn’t earned it.
Friends of mine who are
fans of the show were troubled that the first version featured only five
players from the previous season and one from a few years earlier. I’ll confess
I was initially dismayed by this as well but I did understand the logic. To
launch a tournament of this magnitude in prime time, you needed to included both the most
successful players in the show’s run and those who were the most recently well
known. That was no doubt at least a partial reason that Andrew He and Sam
Buttrey, who had been finalists in the 2022 Tournament of Champions were
invited back instead of some of the more famous players from even the last decade.
But now that the
tournament has become a ratings success Jeopardy can now concentrate on
bring back famous names from more than just five years back. So who should
participate in the second Jeopardy Masters next May? Considering that ABC is
rerunning the series in the coming weeks and since I have proven that I know Jeopardy
better than
most, I’ve decided to offer my humble suggestions for the next one. Here are
ten of the greatest contestants that I think deserve to return.
Brad Rutter
In all honesty the first
Masters Tournament really should have including Brad. While he did lose his
undefeated title in the Greatest of All Time match back in 2020, he remains
Jeopardy’s all time biggest money winner, having won nearly five million
dollars over twenty years. Considering that Ken Jennings knows better than
anyone just how brilliant a player Brad is – the hard way, Brad defeated him in
the Ultimate Tournament of Champions, The Battle of the Decades and The
Jeopardy All-Star Games – I am slightly surprised Jennings did advocate for
him. Especially considering their shared history over more than fifteen years,
we could have had nearly as much with the back and forth between him and Brad
as we enjoyed between Ken and James. If Brad doesn’t come back next time, it
will be severely disappointing.
Roger Craig
There was a period where
Roger Craig may have been the third greatest player in Jeopardy history:
certainly Alex Trebek considered him such when he faced off against Ken
Jennings and Brad Rutter in the finals of the Battle of the Decades. And even
though his original streak was relatively short compared to others on this list,
it’s hard not to consider him one of the greatest.
He broke Jennings one day
mark of $75,000 on only his second day as champion. While he only won six
games, he won $230,200 in them, which at the time of his original appearance
was good enough for third of any player in their original run. (The other two
were Ken Jennings and David Madden.) He also managed to win the Tournament of
Champions that year in very impressive fashion and he did make it to the finals
of the Battle of the Decades and very easily could have beaten Ken or Brad had
a Daily Double gone the other way. There was a reason he was invited back to
play in the Jeopardy All-Star Games in 2018 and why he was drafted relatively
quickly. In the days of the super-champions his marks might not seem as
impressive, but he’s still one of the greatest ever.
Larissa Kelly
Way back in May of 2008,
Larissa Kelly became the first female champion to win six games on Jeopardy.
Lost under that was that she had won $222,597 which at the time was the
third highest total won in competition.
Larissa then narrowly missed
winning the 2009 Tournament of Champions, but still took home $100,000. Her six
games were not surpassed until Stephane Jass won seven games in 2013 and the
money she had won by a female contest was not surpassed until Julia Collins did
so until 2014 (and not to take anything away from Julia’s accomplishments but
it did take her eleven games to surpass Larissa’s original mark.)
Larissa was dominant in
her match in the Battle of the Decades until a late Daily Double and a tough
Final Jeopardy caused her to lose her match to Russ Schumacher. She more than
made up for it when she was invited back to play in the All-Star Games and was
picked to play by Brad Rutter. She was a vital part to Brad’s success in the
tournament and as a result, Team Brad would win the million dollar grand prize.
Julia’s combined winnings over those tournaments (estimated at roughly
$660,000) were the high water mark of a female contestant until Amy Schneider
came along.
In a sense she deserves
to come back to fight against a play of the caliber of Mattea Roach and James
Holzhauer. Besides given her track record, it would be around time for her to
be invited back anyway
Julia Collins
There was a time when
Julia Collins had the second longest streak of all time on Jeopardy with her
twenty wins set in 2014. Over the last five years, she has fallen quite a bit on
that list: indeed four of the five people ahead of her participated in the
first Masters Tournament.
Julia’s stint as the winningest
female contestant did not last much longer. When she participated in the
All-Star Games, her team performed the poorest and left first. (That is why
Larissa Kelly was back ahead of her when Amy Schneider began her remarkable run
back in 2021.)
For both those reasons, I
think it would be sporting for Julia to be brought back for the next
incarnation. She would have to face off against at least two of the people who
unseated her in both games and money won Holzhauer and Roach. Besides
considering that she is one of those players who in the opening titles of the
original show we occasionally see, its clear that the show considers her a
master.
Buzzy Cohen
It would have been just
as interesting to see Buzzy invited back to the first Masters Tournament as it
would have been to have Brad brought back, especially since, like Ken, he knows
what its like to be on the other side of the lectern. There has been so much
controversy surrounding Buzzy for reasons that I don’t fully comprehend that it
overshadows his accomplishments which are considerable.
Buzzy won nine games and
just over $164,000 in them in his original run in the spring of 2016. He then
managed a remarkable victory in the 2017 Tournament of Champions in one of the most
astonishing comebacks in more than thirty years. Naturally he was invited to
come back in the Jeopardy All-Star Games two years later and under his
leadership, his team did something that had not been done to that point in
Jeopardy history: it nearly overcame Brad Rutter’s team. Only by poor luck did
Buzzy not manage to become a finalist: as it is, his team still performed remarkably
well. Considering that Buzzy has a considerable history with game shows and is
currently appearing with Brad Rutter and James Holzhauer on The Chase, he
would add both incredible competition and a lot of fun to the next incarnation.
Austin Rogers
In the 2022 Tournament of
Champions Sam Buttrey may have been the first Jeopardy champion who won
admirers as much because of his personality as his play. The last notable player
to do so was Austin, in part of his hysterical antics and gesticulations. Often
forgotten was the fact he was one of the greatest players of all times.
In 12 games he won $411,000,
which at the time was the fifth highest amount won by any player in history,
and the first player in Jeopardy history to win more than $65,000 in
back-to-back appearances. He ran into a rough patch in the Tournament of
Champions but was in the best position to win at the end of Game 1. The Final
Jeopardys in both games were incredibly tough.
Less than a year later he
was the captain of his own team in the All-Stars and has the misfortune of
running into Ken Jennings in his first match. A hard fought wild card match
again gave him a good chance to win redemption but a failure in Final Jeopardy
brought him up short.
Austin was already a celebrity
among Jeopardy champions, and even gave clues in a Jeopardy category in Celebrity
Jeopardy. I’d love to see him go head to head with James Holzhauer and I think
all fans would love to see him back.
David Madden
Given how frequently we
seem to have a super champion on Jeopardy these days, it might come as a shock
to the relatively recent viewer to learn that there was a gap of nearly eight
years the second place total for a Jeopardy champion was locked in at nineteen
wins. Even more stunning was that this mark was set little more than a year
after Ken Jennings had his run of seventy four games.
And yet at the conclusion
of season 21 and for the first few games of season 22, David Madden did just
that winning nineteen games and just over $430,000. Strangely enough he did not
have a successful run in the Tournament of Champions, ending up being flattened
in his semi-final appearance. Nor did he appear in the Battle of The Decades in
2014, much to my disappointment. There was apparently some kind of contract problem
and he did not think he could appear. Alex Trebek announced this and admitted
he was missed.
The problem was
apparently resolved by the time of the Jeopardy All-Star Games and he came back
swinging when he was part of Brad’s team. He got both of the Final Jeopardys he
had to answer correctly, put up a big lead in the Jeopardy round of the final,
and shared in the prize of a million dollars.
Since then, of course, he
has fallen even further down the list of all time winners than Julia Collins:
he may not even be in the top ten when it comes to games won anymore. That
said, with the exception of Ken Jennings, he was the original super-champion
and more than deserves to be brought back to fight against some of the newer
breed.
Matt Jackson
Along with Julia Collins,
Matt Jackson was the first in the vanguard of super-champions we see today. His
thirteen wins were the fourth longest streak during his run in October of 2015.
Just as impressive was how he won: in four of his matches he won $40,000 or more
in four games and only two of his wins were not runaway victories.
He seemed likely to be an
unstoppable force in the Tournament of Champions that season…then he ran into an
immovable object in Alex Jacob. (Alex himself deserves to return in a future
Masters Tournament; he won his Tournament of Champions in what was arguably the
most dominant victory in the format.) Matt did his very best but had to settle
for second place and $100,000.
Ken Jennings respected
his talent so much that in the Jeopardy All-Star Games he chose him as his teammate.
Matt more than lived up to the billing, being nearly as dominant as Ken was in his
play. Only the dominance of Brad’s team in the second game of the final would
moot his efforts, he would still share in the $300,000 second prize. Few would
argue Matt deserves to be considered a master.
Pam Mueller
Pam’s appearance on this
list is entirely about what Jeopardy fans would consider ‘the postseason’. She has
only won the 2000 College Championship to her name and was a semi-finalist in
the 2001 Tournament of Championship. But you underestimate her at your peril,
as countless veterans found out firsthand in the Ultimate Tournament of
Champions as she climbed the ladder to the semi-finals and fought one of the
hardest matches in Jeopardy tournament history before being sent home with just
over $102,000. In a field of 145, she would finish fifth in money won.
That dominance got her
invited back to the Battle of the Decades where she was nearly as superb, defeating
two previous Tournament of Champions winners in her first match, going into
Final Jeopardy in the quarterfinals in the lead against two more (she ended up
qualifying for a wild card) and going toe to toe with Roger Craig and Colby
Burnett in the semi-finals before losing. She went home with $25,000.
Of all the players in the
Jeopardy All-Star Games, her appearance was chronologically the earliest. Colby
Burnett chose her for his team, and she would help Team Colby make into the
finals where she went head to head with Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter. Her team
left in third place but she shared in $100,000.
She does not have the
same success as such female champions as Amy Schneider or Julia Collins, but in
a way Pam is one of their ancestors. Throw in the fact that she has one of the
most memorable and charming personalities in Jeopardy history and I have no
problem calling her a Master.
Sam Kavanaugh
I’m pressing the
definition slightly when it comes to including Sam. He may have won $156,500 in
five games and did win the 2021 Tournament of Champions but looking at the
field, it’s hard to argue he was the most qualified member of his own bracket. Jason
Zuffranieri won 19 games just after he was defeated and more than half a
million dollars. In the 2021 Tournament, three women managed to win eight games
apiece and in the case of Jennifer Quail and Mackenzie Jones, considerably more
money in their original run. Jennifer finished second in the Tournament to him
So why I am giving the
nod to Sam over any of these players? Honestly the sympathy vote. When the first
lineup for the Jeopardy Masters was announced, Sam posted online that he was
somewhat sad not to be included. One of the posts expressed empathy…then
admitted that they had to google Sam to remember who he was. He had, remember,
won the Tournament of Champions, eighteen months ago. Such, far too often, can
be the short shelf-life in the memory of most fans of TV of the average
Tournament of Champions winner and if I’m being honest, he was certainly more
qualified than either Andrew He or the other Sam who got invited back.
So yes, there are other
Masters more qualified. But out of deference to the fact he wasn’t chosen
first, he should probably be brought back for the second one.
Those who are long term
fans of the show will notice that with the exception of Pam and Brad, all of
them date to after the five game limit was abolished and the doubling of the
money that began in the 2001 season. Am I being unjust to those who came
before? No, because I have a strategy, and in a follow-up that will come next
week, I will reveal it to you as a pitch to the show’s producers.
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