When I completed my pitch
for former champions in the next edition of the Jeopardy Masters Tournament
when it happens, the lion’s share were from the era following the dollar
figures being doubled in 2001. And the two who were from that era – Brad Rutter
and Pam Mueller – have spent the lion’s share of their careers in Jeopardy
playing in that particular period. This was a deliberate decision.
Going back to the early
years of Jeopardy: from 1986 to 1995, Jeopardy hosted a Seniors Tournament.
Alex Trebek had seen that players who were older than fifty were not doing as
well as the younger players and arranged for a tournament where, if they chose,
players who were fifty or older could compete in it. The prize would be $25,000
(which at the time was the going rate for participants in the Teen Tournament
and College Championship) and a slot in the upcoming years’ Tournament of
Champions. Several of these players were very skilled and many of them would
subsequently do quite well in the Tournament of Champions – three ended up
being finalists. But the tournament was eventually discontinued in 1995, probably
because many of those fifty and older were opting to play the regular games
instead. This was understandable because there was more money at stake.
In many of the super
tournaments in subsequent years, starting with the Million Dollar Masters in
2002, the show would invite players from further back in the show’s history.
These champions would often do very well against younger players and while none
would ever get to a position to defeat either Brad Rutter or Ken Jennings,
there were still several who performed superbly and one sizable amounts of
money. I was disappointed when the Jeopardy All-Star Challenge took place in
2019 and no player prior to 2000 had been invited to compete. (Then again, it
was a team event and perhaps the producers were afraid that an older champion
might hamper their young teammates in that competition.)
Now that players like Sam
Buttrey have proven that ‘elder statesmen’ can do as well, if not better, then
some of his younger and more successful champions, I believe a similar
tournament should be held for competitors from further back in the annals of
Jeopardy history. There is precedent for this, particularly the Battle Of The
Decades, which chose to invite fifteen players from the 1980s to compete
against each other. Most of the champions were in their fifties or older, but
their general level of competition was superb and they performed better when it
came to Final Jeopardy collectively than the players who collectively
represented the 1990s or the 2000s.
To do so, however, would
mean facing the reality of time. Several of the champions of the first decade
are already very old and in more than a few cases have already passed away.
India Cooper and Tom Nosek, who each competed in the Battle of the Decades died
in the interim between that tournaments completion and now. There is also the
unpleasant fact that the lion’s share of Tournament of Champions winners and
finalists for much of the first two decades of Jeopardy were male and almost
all white. (I have commented on Jeopardy’s troubled history with minority
champions in my articles over the years and this would amplify the problem.)
So in order to try and
come up with an equitable solution, I am going to suggest ten players from whom
a field of six might reasonably be selected. The lion’s share will be from the
mid-1990s or later.
Chuck Forrest
When the Battle of the
Decades took place in 2014, Ken Jennings faced off against Chuck in his
semi-final match. In it he talked about Chuck by saying that he was the first Jeopardy
champion who was an inspiration to him. That is a fair assessment.
In September of 1985,
Chuck Forest set the five day total of $72,800 and won the following year’s Tournament of Champions in such a
dominant fashion that the show’s producers changed the rules so that second
and first runner ups would have minimum
guarantees going forward. Chuck would appear in almost every major subsequent
tournament in the next thirty years, starting with Super Jeopardy in 1990,
finishing as a semi-finalist in both the Million Dollar
Masters and the Battle of The Decades and receiving a bye into the second round
of the Ultimate Tournament of Champions. He is also still relatively young as
the old guard goes – he would only be in his early sixties in 2024 – and we’ve
already seen older players do well in subsequent years. Besides, it would be
nice to see Ken and Chuck catch up, particularly because Chuck almost beat him
the last time the two of them met.
Tom Cubbage
Tom Cubbage has a unique
place in Jeopardy history. Not only did he win the first ever College
Championship in 1989, to date he is the only one to go on to win the Tournament
of Champions. In over thirty years of special tournaments, only one subsequent
winner of a special tournament – Colby Burnett, who won the Teacher Tournament
and The Tournament of Champions in 2013 – has managed to replicate Tom’s feat.
(Colby, for the record, should be invited back to complete in a Masters
Tournament in a year to come, if not the next one.)
Tom has not quite had the
same measure of success as Chuck did. He would lose in his appearance on Super
Jeopardy and be narrowly defeated in his first round appearance in the Ultimate
Tournament of Champions. But he performed well in the Battle of the Decades,
even though he had the misfortune of competing against Ken Jennings in his
quarterfinal match and Brad Rutter in his semi-final. Tom would be only
fifty-seven in 2024, and it would be nice to see Tom catch up with Ken.
Leslie Frates
If you saw Groundhog
Day, you saw Leslie Frates in the Jeopardy game that everyone is stunned to
see Bill Murray to do so well in. For
Leslie that was just the first in a long line of stops along the Jeopardy
postseason.
Leslie won five games and
just over $56,000 in 1991. She finished as a semi-finalist in the Tournament of
Champions that year (she lost the game we see being played on that show) Two
years later, she was a finalist in the first special Jeopardy tournament to
celebrate the 10th Anniversary. She was in a good position to win in
the final but ended up in third.
In 2002, she competed in
the Million Dollar Masters and played an extraordinary match against Chuck
Forest and Eric Newhouse, one of the greatest Jeopardy matches I’d seen to that
point. She ended up as a wild card. In her semi-final match, she was the first
player in Jeopardy history to be in a position to defeat Brad Rutter, being
ahead of him at the end of Double Jeopardy. She would get Final Jeopardy
correct but her decision to be nothing changed the course of Jeopardy history.
All three players knew the correct response, but only Brad wagered anything.
His win would put him on a path to a million dollars.
She appeared in the very
first game of the Ultimate Tournament of Champions, started out strong, lost
too much on a Daily Double and went home with $5000. She did better when she
appeared in the Battle of The Decades as was in it until Final Jeopardy. Again
she went home with $5000.
It’s been ten years since
her last appearance which means, like the proverbial groundhog, it’s time for
her to pop her head back in on the Alex Trebek stage.
Jerome Vered
There was a period when I
considered Jerome Vered the third greatest Jeopardy player of all time. I’ll
get to that in a minute.
Jerome is one of the
first truly brilliant champions I remember from when I began watching the show.
In May of 1992, he made history when he won $96,801 in five games. At that
time, the total was the second highest amount won by a competitor in Jeopardy
history to only Frank Spangenberg, who had won $102,597 in 1990. Jerome had
also broken Frank’s one day record of $30,600 and moved the scale to $34,000.
That record stood for more than ten years and was not broken until the dollar
figures were doubled in 2001.
Jerome ended up losing
the Tournament of Champions that year to Leszek Pawlowicz (who should be
invited back himself to one masters or another) Jerome did not get invited back
to a special Tournament until the Ultimate Tournament of Champions in 2005. He
then promptly made up for lost time, making a slow but steady march to the
finals where he faced off against Ken and Brad in a three day affair for $2
million. By the end of Game 2, he was in third place which is where he
finished. He still managed to win over $389,000 for his efforts.
Given his impressive
performance I had high hopes for him in Battle of The Decades. But the Daily
Doubles did not work in Jerome’s favor and he ended up losing to none other
than Tom Cubbage. I think it his time for Jerome – and his very prominent
mustache – to return.
Rachael Schwartz
Before Mattea Roach, before
Amy Schneider, before all the great female champions, there was Rachael
Schwartz, the first female contestant to win the Tournament of Champions way
back in 1994. She may not have had the most impressive track record for any
female champion – indeed, that year two other female contestants won far more
money than she did – but the fact remains that she is the first one to do so
and that deserves recognition.
Of course, she also has a
fairly decent post season record. She was invited back to compete in the Million
Dollar Masters in 2002. She did not get past the quarterfinals but that was in
part due to her competition and part to her wager in Final Jeopardy. She then appeared
in the Ultimate Tournament of Champions – and I’m kind of irked she did not get
a bye into the second round automatically – but she played well in her match
before going down to defeat. Finally in the Battle of the Decades she managed
to get past the first round of a tournament – and then slammed right into Ken Jennings
in her quarterfinal match.
We are coming up on the
thirtieth anniversary of her triumph in the Tournament of Champions, which in
my opinion is another reason to bring her back. Mattea Roach hadn’t even been
born when Rachael made her debut on Jeopardy, but in a sense the two are cut from
the same cloth. (Rachael was a lawyer when she began her original run and
Mattea is still in law school.)
Bob Harris
When he was invited to
the Million Dollar Masters in 2002, Bob thought he had been invited because he
was ‘the funny guy’. As someone who has watched Bob in action for more than
seventeen years, it’s an example of how self-effacing he is.
Bob managed to win five
games in 1997 and an even $58,000. When the 1998 Tournament of Champions took
place, he was suffering from the flu and was utterly horrible in his
quarterfinal appearance. Somehow he made it to a wild-card, then got into the
finals and kept pushing himself forward until his luck ran out in the second
game to Dan Melia.
In the Million Dollar
Masters, he triumphed over Frank Spangenberg and Rachael Schwartz before he ran
into the powerhouse that was Eric Newhouse in the semi-finals. He left with
$25,000. In the Ultimate Tournament of Champions, he narrowly managed to be Tom
Cubbage to get past round 1 and was lead in his second round before he made a
mistake that he was infuriated at himself for making when Final Jeopardy was
revealed. He still won $34,400.
He got invited to the
Battle of the Decades, was in the red for much of the Jeopardy round then
managed to recover and get into second place by the end of Double Jeopardy.
Then he was defeated and left with $5000 more.
All of this, I should
mention, is superb in its ow right before you put in Bob’s humor and
self-mockery which he shows so well in so many games. I still remember his
reaction when he found a Daily Double trailing badly in his semi-final match
and he said to the audience at Radio City: “I get to say this in front of six
thousand people. Let’s make it a true Daily Double!” The audience cheered him
then, and louder when he got it right. Bob has always been a performer on Jeopardy
(as he is in real life, he was a syndicated radio columnist in the
aftermath of his Jeopardy appearance) as well as a gifted writer (his Prisoner
of Trebekestan is considered the quintessential book on the life of a game
show contestant) and he has always been willing to mock himself on the show in
a way that’s charming. I think we all need to see him again in some form.
Robin Carroll
In a sense Robin was even
more of a pioneer that Rachael Schwartz was. Not only did she win the
Tournament of Champions, for a very brief period Robin had won more money than
anyone in Jeopardy history. (There may be an asterisk involved, but it’s not
worth going into here.).
In 2000, Robin became the
second woman to win a Tournament of Champions. She had already won more than
$60,000 in her original appearance. Then in 2001 Jeopardy held an International
Tournament that featured players who had played on the International versions
of the show. Representing America, Robin won that tournament and another
$50,000. For about a year, she had won more money than anyone in Jeopardy
history and was invited back for the Million Dollar Masters. Unfortunately in
her quarterfinal appearance she lost and left with $10,000.
Deservedly she received a
bye into the second round of the Ultimate Tournament of Champions, but like so
many of the players who did receive a bye, she could not advance from there and
left with another $25,000. A little more than a decade later, she managed to
win her appearance in a come from behind victory in the 1990s. She played
decently in the early stages of her quarterfinal match, but eventually she fell
to a distant third and lost to Roger Craig (who I spoke about quite a bit in the previous entry.) She left with
another $10,000.
By that point, of course,
she had dropped well behind the records set
by previous female contestants such as Larissa Kelly and Julia Collins.
I think it is more than time for Robin to come back and prove she can still
represent.
Eddie Timanus
Eddie made history when
he won five games in 1999 for an obvious reason: he is completely blind. The
only accommodations that have been made for him when he plays any Jeopardy game
is that before each round he is handed a card with the categories in Braille. With
a minor accommodation in other tournaments, he doesn’t need any help.
Lost under the remarkable
nature of Eddie’s triumph was how great a
player he was: the $69,700 he won was the most that any participant in the 2000
Tournament of Champions had. He was a semi-finalist in the Tournament of
Champions, and only poor luck on a Daily Double in Double Jeopardy kept him out
of the finals.
He was subsequently invited
back to every super tournament for the next fourteen years. He never got past
the first round of any of them but it was never for lack of effort: he ran into
a tough opponent in the Million Dollar Masters, managed to play superbly in the
first Round of Ultimate Tournament of Champions and was in the lead in his match
of the Battle of The Decades for basically the entire game before a tough Final
Jeopardy that no one could get right led to Rachael Schwartz being able to get
past him. It is high time Eddie come
back.
Babu Srinivasan
Babu and Brad Rutter’s
Jeopardy careers ran parallel for much of their lives. Both qualified for the
2001 Tournament of Champions, but in their original runs Babu had won $20,000
more than Brad did in his. Both managed to get to the semi-finals. Babu was
leading going in the Double Jeopardy round but when he got the penultimate clue
wrong, he would drop into second place – a critical mistake because both he and
the man ahead of him Tad Carithers both knew the correct response to Final
Jeopardy. I’ve often wondered if Babu could have beaten Brad in that final.
Babu was invited to the
Million Dollar Masters a few months later but he would get off to a slow start
in the Jeopardy round and could never get out of third place. Sadly he was the
only player to know the correct Final Jeopardy answer but his score was so low
he could not even get a wild card.
If anything, his luck was
worse in the Ultimate Tournament of Champions. He spent his entire match
comfortably in the lead and then he got tripped up by the rules of Final Jeopardy.
The answer they were going for was All Quiet on the Western Front. Arthur,
Babu’s closest opponent wrote down: All Quiet the Western Front. Babu
wrote down: All’s Quiet on the Western Front. In the eyes of the judges
both were wrong but because Arthur wagered enough to keep him ahead of Babu by
a small margin, he would advance to the next wrong. (Arthur actually apologized
to Babu when it was over.) In the Battle of the Decades, he ended up between
the buzzsaws that were Rachael Schwartz and Eddie Timanus, finished in a
distant third and could not come up with a correct response.
Babu’s career in Jeopardy
and other tournament so closely parallels Brad’s – as well as being one of the
best players just before the dollar figures were changed for good – that I
think he’s earned his time back.
Mark Dawson
Mark Dawson is a
significant player for many reasons. For the purpose of trivia, his last show
was Alex Trebek’s last before he shaved his ‘legendary mustache’. There’s more
than that. He was also the last five time champion who ever received a sports
car when he won his fifth game. But most significantly when he won the 2003
Tournament of Champions, he became the first one to get $250,000 for winning.
In the post Ken Jennings era, it’s hard to remember what a big deal that was at
the time.
Mark has also had more
than his share of success in other tournaments: he was one of only a handful of
Tournament of Champion winners to make it past the first round in the UTC, though
he was eliminated after the second. He also manage to make it to the quarter-finals
of the Battle of the Decade and engaged in a tightly fought match against Chuck
Forrest and Colby Burnett. He would end up not qualifying for the semi-finals
but he did not lose badly: the Final Jeopardy for that match was one of the
toughest in Tournament history.
I am not sure if it is
right to truly consider Mark a senior in the same way as so many of the others,
but he has a more than distinguished record.
There are more than a few other players I would want for this
potential Seniors Masters but all ten of these players are roughly the same age
and all have very distinguished records when it comes to the ‘postseason’. I
think they should be the first ones back.
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