Over the last decade I
have become familiar with the work of a columnist who quasi-regularly publishes
for The Atlantic named Tom Nichols. Nichols’ writing is fundamentally
political and is slightly leftist. Over the last few years in particular his
writing has taking a more alarmist tone towards both Republican officials and,
more alarmingly, Republican voters. There have been a few columns that have
gained prominence that barely rise to the level of yellow journalism, let alone
the think reputable publications should allow to see print.
Yet while over the
years I have had problems with Nichols’ writing, I have never been willing to
fully dismiss it mainly because I have respect for what he accomplished before
he became a prominent writer. Because in 1994 Tom Nichols, then a political
science professor, won five games on Jeopardy,
participated in that year’s Tournament of Champions and more than a decade
later appeared in the 2005 Ultimate Tournament of Champions. And I am aware of
that fact because his appearances on the show came during a period when I was
in the early stages of both watching and becoming a partial historian of it.
During that era, with
no Internet to speak of you had to rely on your memory of past champions
appearances more than anything else. And in a desk drawer in my room, from
roughly 1993 to 1998, I would do my best to keep records of participants in the
upcoming Tournaments of Champions. I remember watching Tom’s first four games and
then saw him lose on the fifth. Based on the rules of Jeopardy, it was
an open question whether Tom would be able to qualify for the Tournament that
November. However because of some technicality
that I was never aware of, Tom was invited back in October of 1994 for a chance
at his fifth win. He won that game and officially qualified with $57,690.
As a student of the
show, the roster for the 1994 Tournament of Champions included some of the
finest Jeopardy champions in the 5-Game limit era. Rachael Schwartz became the
first female winner of a Tournament of Champions that year and she was among
the least successful players in her original run. Indeed that year Amy Fine won
$72,603 and set the benchmark for the most money won by a female contestant
that stood until the dollar figures were doubled in 2001. That year also featured Steve Chernicoff and
John Cuthbertson, each of whom won over $82,000 which would be among the
highest five game totals of the 1990s. Both men would do very well in the
Ultimate Tournament of Champions and Rachael Schwartz has participated in every
special tournament for the next twenty years. So even though Tom was eliminated
in the quarterfinals of that year’s tournament, that’s a very impressive class
to be a part of.
And I have a very fond
personal memory of Tom because in his return to the UTC, he told one of the
most delightful anecdotes I’ve heard in more than thirty years of watching the
show, about how a fellow challenger tried to psych him out:
“We were waiting back
stage and this female challenger told me: ‘You don’t want to beat me in front
of my son, do you?’ Well, the first thought that went through my head was: ‘’Well,
yeah I do.” But instead I said: ‘I just married last year. You don’t want to
beat me in front of my wife, do you? Your son will always love you. My wife
will leave me!”
The end of that story
got one of the biggest rounds of laughter and applause I’ve heard from an
audience to an anecdote in my years of watching the show. However, all of that
has been tainted by an article that Nichols wrote last night.
As those of you who read
by articles might be aware of, earlier this year a three-game champion named Yogesh
Raut made a series of posts on social media in which he torched the show as not
‘being the utmost in trivia and belittling the players who competed on it. These
comments were immediately savaged by fellow Jeopardy champions such as James
Holzhauer. Nearly eight months after the torment, Nichols weighed in on the
controversy – and I really wish he had not.
To be fair, Nichols gave
a full-throated defense of the players who appeared on it, was willing to share
secrets on how a Jeopardy player does well on the show, and even shared his low
point on Jeopardy – in which he admits why he screwed up on the Final
Jeopardy that eliminated him from the Tournament of Champions. However, he
negates all of this by paragraphs that open and close the article. In the former,
while disclosing his involvement with Jeopardy (which I listed above) he
says that while he watched the show for years, he doesn’t anymore and thinks
that the elimination of the five-day limit has done much damage Jeopardy’s integrity.
Considering that there are many people who watch the show these days who might
very well be unaware that there ever was such a limit and the millions of
people who began watching the show entirely because of Ken Jennings’ amazing
streak in 2004, this doesn’t rise to the level of a back-handed compliment or
even damning with faint praise. I would
compare it to a baseball player who played forty or fifty years saying that he
doesn’t recognize the game anymore – he technically knows what he’s talking
about, but he’s insulting everybody whose playing today.
And he actually doubles
down in the final paragraphs, admitting he does not like the changes that the
show has made over the years and that he does not like either Jennings or Mayim
Bialik as hosts. Those are fair criticisms I’m willing to grant you and fans
can disagree on it. But the unkindest cut comes when he says he believes the
show should have ended when Alex Trebek passed away in 2020.
This insults everybody.
It insults Alex Trebek, who would have said Jeopardy is bigger than any
one person. It insults Jeopardy because it argues the only reason it
lasted was because of Alex Trebek. And it is a stab in the back and front of
everyone who has played the game in the last three years, including Yogesh
Raut.
Indeed Nichols’ defense,
reduced its core, is nonsensical. It is a variation on ‘don’t hate the player,
hate the game.” Considering that the only difference is Raut was hating on
both, that’s hardly helpful. Considering one can not truly have the game
without the player, it’s ludicrous. It’s little more than one person saying: “you
don’t understand what it is to be a Jeopardy champion because you didn’t play
when I did.”
That’s before you even get to the fact that
Nichols is white and Raut is of Hindi origin, which is going to lead to a whole
new set of problems. And Nichols was incredibly selective in which part of Raut’s
critiques he chose to address. Raut also argued about the show’s problems with
minority contestants over the year and a far more trouble rant in which he
argued that the reporter who published the series that would lead to producer
Mike Richards resigning first as host, then producer of Jeopardy in the summer
of 2021 were little more than ‘gotcha’ journalism. Nichols basically chose to cherry pick Raut’s
critique and then give the worst possible opinion of the least controversial
part.
I don’t know how many
fans of Jeopardy read The Atlantic but I’m willing to bet this will
eventually reach to many former Jeopardy champions, even those who never heard
of him. Jennings almost certainly knows who he is: the man at the center of the
UTC almost certainly knew every player in that tournament, and as the host of
the show he’d certainly have access to his past history. Jennings, who is
always diplomatic, will probably not comment. I can not say the same for his
fellow Jeopardy champions, and there is a very good chance that once this
article comes out Nichols will find himself at the center of as big a shitstorm
among Jeopardy fans as Raut did, if not greater.
Nichols, to be clear, broke the cardinal rule
of Jeopardy champions: you keep your feelings about what’s happening on the
show to yourself. You do so if for no other reasons than materialistic ones:
you hope to be invited back some day to play the game. This love of the show is one that can reach
across the years and decades. Indeed, a story of a fellow Jeopardy champion who
was more prominent than Nichols will illustrate that fact.
Richard Cordray won
five games in April of 1987 and was a semi-finalist in the 1987 Tournament of
Champions. After his appearance he became
very prominent in politics in Ohio, eventually becoming treasurer and attorney
general of the state. He made a failed attempt to run for governor in 2018.
In 2011, President
Obama nominated Richard to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. He
was confirmed by the Senate in 2013. Not long after he was invited back to play
in the 1980s round of the Battle of the Decades in 2014. Because Richard was a federal employee, he
did not take any prize money. However, he paid his own plane fare and hotel fare
to participate. That is how much Cordray wanted to play the game he loved and
see Alex Trebek once again.
Nichols’ has violated
the code of the Jeopardy champion and done so in the pages of his publication.
I don’t know if the show will react to it; the producers are generally
diplomatic when it comes to controversial issues. When Raut made his original
rant on social media, the show said that people were entitled to their opinions
and they would welcome the opportunity to see Raut on the stage again. (That
may even happen later this year.)
It’s hard to now how
the show will react to this, but I can’t see the fellow Jeopardy champions
being nearly as kind. His comment about
the show should have being cancelled after Trebek passed will definitely create
a firestorm, especially among those fans of Matt Amodio, Amy Schneider and
Mattea Roach, who entered into Jeopardy history within the first full year of
Trebek’s passing. Nichols’ comment comes
as a direct affront to them and their accomplishments, and that in itself is
something I will never be able to forgive him for.
I will close this
article with a personal admonition to Nichols: at some point during the
studying for Jeopardy that you say every player goes through, you must
have come across the adage: ‘if you can’t say something nice, don’t say
anything at all.” I realize given the nature of your writing on politics that goes
against everything you and so many of your creed stand for. But in the case of
something that was outside the purview of The Atlantic, you chose to violate
that cardinal rule, apparently voluntarily. I suspect you will be the target of
a fair amount of abuse in the next several weeks from the same circle that targeted Raut, and trust me, it will not be
framed in the form of a question – at least not one that your magazine can
publish uncensored.
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