There is a
sick part of me beginning to think that Jeopardy should have stuck with Mike Richards as the producer.
Oh I know how
he arranged the search for a replacement for Alex Trebek with the same
deviousness Dick Cheney sought out a running mate for W., that his behavior
behind the scenes involved toxic sexism, and that many former contestants are
speaking out about what a monster he was to work with. But say what you will
about the man: when he was running the show he understood the importance of the
fundamentals traditions of Jeopardy’s tournament, particularly the Tournament
of Champions: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Now I grant
you in the past several years in particular we’ve heard multiple complaints,
some from valid sources, some that are pure rants, about the problems Jeopardy
has with most female and minority contestants.
I don’t deny the fundamental truth of that problem with the show’s
history. I would also like to point out
that over the past decade, the show has been great leaps and bounds with
increased numbers of both in regular and other tournaments. The problems that many people are long-term,
but they have been working themselves out.
But ever
since Richards was fired from the show the new producers of Jeopardy seem
to be going out of their way to alter the show’s format in what has been system
that was working perfectly fine for thirty five years and making ridiculous
alterations so that… well, I still can’t understand what the changes are for or
who they’re supposed to benefit.
For those of
you who are unaware of how radical the changes to Jeopardy have been in the
past few years, it’s worth a brief refresher course. Ever since Jeopardy began
airing in 1985 almost all of their tournaments have followed the same basic
format: fifteen quarterfinalists face off in five matches producing five winners
and four high scorers for wild-card spots. Those nine players then face off in
three semi-final matches that produce three finalists who face off in a
two-game total point affair resulting in the winner. There have been some exceptions with super-tournaments
that I have discussed before, but during the Alex Trebek era that was the
standard that the show followed.
In the
aftermath of Trebek’s passing Season 37 followed the same concept with the 2021
Tournament of Champions that it had with every other Tournament of Champions to
that point, and Sam Kavanaugh ended up winning the $250,000 prize.
After the
scandals about Richards led to his being fired first as host and then producer
the show spent several months reeling from the scandals, but the presence of so
many brilliant super champions – first Matt Amodio, then Amy Schneider – were
enough to carry Jeopardy through the controversy through Season 38.
I don’t know
if the Professors Tournament was an inspiration of Richards or just a variation
of the Teachers Tournament that had been a part of Jeopardy for the past
decade but it followed the same format all previous tournaments had before. The
only other special tournament in Season 38 was the prime time Jeopardy National
College Championship.
This tournament,
to be clear, did veer dramatically from the traditional College Championship
the show had done since 1989: it involved 12 quarterfinal matches leaded to 12
semi-finalists and only the three highest scoring winners of the four games
ended up in the final. Since the Final took on the same format as every other
tournament, I didn’t think it made much of a difference.
Now I made
multiple posts on my blog during Season 38 about how with so many
super-champions, several other players who had done well during this period –
in particular four female champions who each had won four games – were not
guaranteed eligibility because of the number of players who had even then won
more than five. This struck me as unfair and I remember suggested the show find
a way to bring them back. Perhaps that’s the definition of ‘be careful what you
wish for.”
The 2022
Tournament of Champions completely changed the format of the previous
thirty-seven seasons and to be clear, many parts of it did not sit right with
me at the time. The most significant change that bothered me was the decision
to change the final from a two-game total point affair to what was a best of
seven series with the first player to win three games winning the $250,000
grand prize. I hadn’t been wild about this format when it had occurred the
Jeopardy Greatest of all Time Tournament in 2020 and I didn’t particularly like
it here. But I took all of those changes to the format – the creation of the
second chance tournament, reducing the quarterfinal matches to winner take-all
with no wild card, giving the three players a bye into the semi-finals – with
the impression that this had to be a one time thing given the nature of the
last two years. The idea that Jeopardy would keep going with this format
had to be based on extenuating circumstances.
Now as the
fortieth season begins, it seems that the producers of Jeopardy seem
determined, for all intents and purposes, to completely tear down every aspect
of the formula that had no basic flaws to begin with in the name of some
greater purpose that at some point really seems to be some game show equivalent
of Through the Looking Glass – all should win, all should have a prize.
This was already made clear by their inexplicable decision to not merely
continue with the Second Chance Tournament at the start of the season - a decision that I have already spent so much
time and energy deploring that it goes against everything game shows and Jeopardy
in particular stand for – but with their brand new ‘Wild Card Tournament’.
Earlier today I finally got a look at the format of this new tournament and I
am horrified by what I have seen. I don’t know who is going to be participating
in this tournament and in a sense the players don’t matter, only the number.
This
tournament involves four ‘suits’ of players: Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds, and
Spades. Each ‘Leg’ of the Tournament will consist of nine quarterfinal matches
each of which will lead to three semi-finals and a two-game final. I’ll do the
math for you: each of these suits required 27 players, 108 total.
I think even
the most casual of Jeopardy fans knows without me having to tell them that in
order to come up with this many players for any tournament, the bar must be
ridiculously low: 27 would be too many, much less 108. But let me give you the
greatest parallel:
In 2005,
Jeopardy held The Ultimate Tournament of Champions. 144 former Jeopardy players
were invited to participate in what would involve 73 matches that led to a
three game final against Ken Jennings for $2 million. In order to get to that
number the show invited every winner of College Championship or Teen
Tournament, every winner of a Tournament of Champions and every five game
winner who had won just over $47,000 plus.
Now to be
clear this left out quite a few very good players including several who had
participated in previous super tournaments or had gotten very far in their
Tournament of Champions. The majority of these players were white men. The male
contestants outnumbered the female contestants at the start of the tournament
by roughly a four to one majority. And
there were less than ten minority contestants of any kind in this tournament.
The show could have lowered the bar and allowed other players to participate.
But they chose not to because: a) this was going to be a lengthy process as it
was and, b) all of these players were more than qualified.
To compare
the Jeopardy Wild Card Tournament to the Ultimate Tournament of Champions is
not fair at all. Everyone in the UTC had already won something to get there. No
one had a problem that for nearly four months in 2005 there was no regular play
because we were seeing the best of the best.
Let’s
consider what this new ‘post-season’ means by contrast. Starting with the
Second Chance Tournament, we will see fourteen weeks before we see a regular
season game. In ten weeks in an average
Jeopardy season, one might potentially have six or seven ‘normal’ champions who
could win five games or more. In Alex Trebek’s final season we had two five
game winners and two four game winners by the time the Wild Card Tournament
will have aired the same number of games. By the end of the Wild Card
Tournament four players will have qualified regardless so what’s the
difference?
Plenty. I
don’t know who all the participants in the Wild Card Tournament will be aside
from the fact all of that appeared in Season 37 or 38. The fact that three of
those players ended up qualifying by
winning in the Second Chance Tournament these past three weeks should tell you
something but even if every single other participant in this tournament is more
qualified then them (already a low bar to pass) it doesn’t change the fact that
Jeopardy has invited back 105 players.
Put it in a
larger context. In the first ten weeks of this season Jeopardy has invited back
129 players who have appeared in Seasons 37 and 38. Over those two years
Jeopardy aired 450 regular play games.
Statistically speaking that means if you played on Jeopardy any time
over those two seasons, you had a somewhat better than a thirty percent chance
of coming back on Jeopardy, even if you didn’t win. Casinos should have odds this good.
I don’t think
I need to expend more time and energy explaining why, sight unseen, the Wild
Card Tournament is bad for Jeopardy on every level: even the most casual
fan knew that the Second Chance Tournament made little sense for Jeopardy and
this new tournament is exponentially worse.
So it’s time to ask the question: why? There is no aspect of either of
these tournaments that do anything to make Jeopardy a better show, and
in fact their very existence does a great deal to destroy the integrity that
the show spent more than thirty six years building and seemed to have recovered
from even after all of the scandals that came in the year in the aftermath of
Alex Trebek’s passing. In forty years of
the show’s existence no one ever even considered the idea of having a tournament
of failed players coming back, and now we have two of them that will take up
the first quarter of the season. What logic is driving the producers?
I cannot say
but at this point I have come up with two theories, one logistical, one that
deals with social context. Both theories are ridiculously convoluted and flawed,
so I’m going to save the discussion of the latter for a separate article
because I will need to give greater context.
The logistical
theory gives something resembling a logical explanation. It’s ridiculously
flawed regardless but there’s at least something approaching reason to it.
Basically it
comes down to a combination of three factors:
1.
Jeopardy decided to do its next Tournament of
Champions with 21 contestants instead of fifteen.
2.
They
made the decision to have the postseason at the start of Season 40.
3.
They
needed more players to fill out the brackets at the end of Season 39.
Every one of
these decisions is flawed from the start because none of them take into
consideration everything that led to the 2022 Tournament of Champions.
To start with
the obvious, the reason that there were so many eligible players for the 2022
Tournament was because of a perfect storm of events which included COVID-19,
the passing of Alex Trebek, the immense number of super-champions in Season 38 and
the readjustment of Jeopardy during both the search for a replacement of Trebek
and the scandals involving Mike Richards.
By the time the
2021 Tournament of Champions took place fifteen players had already qualified
and two others had qualified for the next one. I understand that Jeopardy was
readjusting; they had to. But it does not change the fact the Tournament of
Champions model for 2022 was deeply flawed and that includes the fact that they
had two Second Chance Tournaments to fill out the brackets for it.
Jeopardy has
always had a history of having eligibility requirements for its Tournaments of
Champions before. Season 38 were extenuating circumstances I grant you but the
decision to overcorrect was a flawed one from the start. Furthermore it also led
to the idea that every season Jeopardy could find 21 players for a tournament
going forward. And if you’ve been a student of Jeopardy, you know that there
have been many times when they have struggled to even get fifteen.
The clearest
model came when they held their 2006 Tournament of Champions. In the aftermath
of Ken Jennings 74 game streak, the UTC and David Madden’s nineteen game streak
during Season 21 it had been almost two full years since Jeopardy had had a
Tournament of Champions. It took them until May of 2006 to get fifteen players
to fill out the bracket. And to get that many players they needed to admit five
players who’d won three games more than any period in their history.
I think the
producers made that decision out of necessity. They must not have liked the idea but they’d
already delayed they’d already gone more than a year without it and they probably
didn’t want to wait until 2007. From that point on the Tournament of Champions
began to float on the Jeopardy schedule, usually waiting until they had fifteen
qualified participants. This doesn’t always work out the way they want; they had
no Tournament of Champions in the calendar year of 2008 or 2016 and in some of
the years they did they had to make multiple concessions to fill out the
bracket. But the producers never thought of lowering the bar to let less
qualified players in except out of dire necessity: between the 2006 and 2021
Tournaments of Champions, only two players who won three games were ever
invited to compete again.
It has always
been difficult to fill out a bracket of fifteen champions in the course of a
season; to do so with 21 would seem nigh on impossible. The decision to
subsequently begin Season 40 with the Tournament of Champions would have been a
flawed concept from the start because it argued that 21 players would be
eligible to fill out the bracket by the
time the season began. And as we now know, it wasn’t only thirteen players have
qualified for the Tournament of Champions (fourteen if you count Ike Barnholtz,
who won Celebrity Jeopardy which is its own can of worms) And even this
Wild Card Tournament won’t do the job: the creators acknowledge there will be
only four winners of it, which will give us eighteen.
Which in all
honesty gets be to a hole in Jeopardy’s logic so big it’s beyond me. With the
exception of the High School Reunion Tournament, there were none of the usual Tournaments
that have led to previous qualifiers. The Professors Tournament, which led to the
arrival on the scene of Sam Buttrey, never took place. Neither did the College
Championship. And in the latter case they can’t argue their wasn’t time for
filming it because that one aired in prime time.
The solution
is obvious. You wanted a Tournament of Champions? Go back to the old format of fifteen and have
the College Championship and Professors Tournament. Hell, make that the start of the ‘post season’.
It would take up far less time and you wouldn’t have to spend so much time and
energy doing something that no one asked for and ultimately damages the show’s
integrity to such an extent.
In fact, it’s
worth asking why the College Championship hasn’t happened at all since
February of 2022. College Champions have
been part of Jeopardy history since the initial winner Tom Cubbage won the
Tournament of Champions in 1989. No one has matched his feat but several
players have done similarly well in the thirty-three years plus of its
existence.
You could also
just as easily have held the Teachers Tournament which has been a fixture of
the show since 2011. I don’t know whether the Professors Tournament was a substitute
for it or not but you have held one or the other and some point in Season 39.
Considering how much the nation fell in love with Sam Buttrey, one can hardly
argue it wouldn’t have reaped larger rewards.
Why didn’t
you just go back to the old format? Some biased idea that once you’ve made an
alteration you have to stick with it forever? The entire history of Jeopardy
tournaments is based on trying new things, finding what works and disregarding
what doesn’t.
And the idea
that somehow the show could be the master of events and allow everything that
led to the 2022 Tournament of Champions was a ludicrous idea even before the
WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes of this past summer. No one can control anything about anything,
least of all the makeup of the Tournament of Champions. To use a quote that the show itself used as a
clue: “I…confess plainly that events have controlled me.” And that’s true of Jeopardy
as everything else. (For those of you who track down the source of the
quote; yes I know who said it and the context; just let me use it without saying
I’m being overdramatic?)
So even if
the only reasons the producers of this show have done so is out of some commitment
to logistics, it was based on a flawed concept from the start and was in denial
of reality. I want to believe this is
the reason because it is the more generous one to Jeopardy. The other explanation is one that is far
worse both in implication and what it means if its true. I will go into detail
on that issue in an article later this week.
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