The wait for more of Jeopardy! The Greatest of All Time is finally over on Tuesday at 8 p.m. ET on ABC, with James Holzhauer, Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter going back to battle for the GOAT title in primetime for a fourth time.
As much as that would be cool, it would mean we would have only gotten four days of Jeopardy! GOAT out of a possible seven.
Which means … it’s time to root for Rutter. A lot of fans already feel bad for the guy after watching Holzhauer and Jennings completely dominate and seeing Rutter miss a bunch of Daily Doubles … but let’s all remember he’s won nearly $5 million from Jeopardy! over the years and will cash in for another $250,000 when all is said and done.
Watching these Jeopardy matches is so intense. And I wanna just fully feel the suspense and awe. But I can't because I just feel so bad for Brad.
I feel bad because Brad is struggling but I feel like he is the most relatable contestant and he wrote “Eagles Super Bowl LII Champs” as his final Jeopardy answer and then said “Go Birds” so therefore he is actually the winner #JeopardyGOAT#FlyEaglesFly
Rutter has finished in third on all three days, and the ideal scenario would be watching him come back and win a couple, for Holzhauer to claim victory on another night, and for all of us to get our popcorn for an all-out wild Game 7 of epic proportions.
Ryan Leaf has a sense of humor these days about being one of the NFL’s biggest draft busts (remember, he joked recently about being left off the NFL 100 list).
So when his name was the answer to a clue on Jeopardy! The Greatest of All Time and he heard about it from the hosts on ESPN’s Golic and Wingo, he found a good way to respond.
The clue was: “In 1998, football fans debated who was the NCAA’s best QB: Peyton Manning or this Washington State Universtiy Cougar; their pro careers went opposite ways.”
It was that last part that Trey Wingo and Mike Golic thought was “unnecessary,” and they all joked about Alex Trebek’s tone on reading it. Leaf thought because the show was on ABC, they could have taken an ESPN route with it:
‘Jeopardy!’ is currently having its Greatest of All Time competition and our friend @RyanDLeaf was the answer of an $800 clue last night😂👇👇 pic.twitter.com/XWpvZasmoM
James Holzhauer is the GOAT of Jeopardy! trash talk.
We won’t know until next week if James Holzhauer will be crowned the Jeopardy! GOAT by beating Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter in the Jeopardy! The Greatest of All Time tournament. But one thing that is absolutely clear is that the professional sports gambler is the Jeopardy! GOAT trash talker.
But in addition to taunting Rutter mid-game the other day and teasing Jennings about never winning a Jeopardy! tournament, Holzhauer has been on fire on Twitter with his trash talk since this special tournament began Tuesday.
(Remember, this is all in good fun, and these guys are clearly joking with each other and having a good time competing. The two runners-up also get $250,000, so no one’s really a loser here.)
Although Rutter — who has the record for most money won on Jeopardy! with $4,688,436 — has struggled this week, including missing several Daily Doubles after he and Jennings have followed Holzhauer’s lead to go all in every time.
But while Jennings has capitalized on the chance to double his totals, falling back to zero on Daily Doubles is a large reason why Rutter has consistently finished third each night.
And Holzhauer has had a little fun with that, honoring Rutter with a participation certificate.
During Holzhauer’s 32-game win streak on regular Jeopardy! in 2019, he employed some gambling moves when going all in on his Daily Doubles, which is how he’d regularly separate himself from his opponents by tens of thousands of dollars. He would often pretend to push all his chips in as a way of risking everything, and Jennings has since adopted that move.
However, Holzhauer had some hilarious criticism about that.
Ken’s form is terrible. This is like Sheryl Crow covering Sweet Child O’ Mine https://t.co/cU9Zp6VJJm
By many accounts, besides the nightly social media buzz — #JeopardyGOAT has been tops on Twitter every night since Tuesday — the ratings are terrific, which means the game show might attempt to find a way to replicate the success with other players who are GOAT-like and put it in primetime.
'Jeopardy: The Greatest of All Time' delivered 14.82 million viewers for ABC at 8 p.m., about 400,000 more than Tuesday's outing https://t.co/flsZ0vksm5#JeopardyGOAT
And that’s where the bad news comes. This is once-in-a-lifetime stuff right here.
It’s a magical combination. There’s James Holzhauer, who ignited the internet last year with his run. There’s Ken Jennings, maybe the most famous game-show contestants of all time thanks to his 74-game winning streak. There’s Brad Rutter, who’s won the most money ever with some clutch performances in the big-cash tournaments.
The X-factor is they have chemistry together (and that includes with Alex Trebek). They’re imitating each other’s now-famous moves, making little inside jokes and taunting each other in a way that’s good-natured. I’ve seen Holzhauer and Rutter congratulate Jennings with a handshake, back-clap or high five after a big Daily Double win. They’re having the most fun, all while playing in a game with elevated stakes and a tougher slate of clues.
It’s going to take years before this sort of confluence of greatness and fun happens again. You need the GOATs to truly be GOATs and to be able to have fun that feels unforced on television. Maybe the solution is giving these three their own show, as someone in the Jeopardy subreddit suggested. But another primetime Jeopardy! playoff series like this one? Nope. Not for a loooong time and maybe never.
So enjoy this lightning in a bottle before it’s all over, when we can go back to our usual half hour of Trebek and the rotating cast of contestants, when we hope for some other potential GOATS — inspired by these three — to keep us riveted.
This is the online version of our morning newsletter, The Morning Win. Subscribe to get irreverent and incisive sports stories, delivered to your mailbox every morning.
I don’t know if you watched the third episode of the Jeopardy! Greatest of All Time tournament Thursday night so I’m going to give you a warning – I’m going to provide a spoiler in just a second so turn and run away if that’s something you don’t want to start your Friday with.
I told you to get outta here! What are you still doing here?
To which I say – and I respect the heck out of Jennings – James Holzhauer has to pull things together and not just bow down and let Jennings win this thing in just four shows.
Because that would be brutal.
Holzhauer become a hero last spring when he racked up 32 straight wins. His strategy was incredible. His personality was fun. He was a star.
Now he’s just one loss away from letting a huge opportunity to be the GOAT of Jeopardy slip out of his soft, professional gambler hands. This isn’t what I expected from Jeopardy James. This is not what I wanted to see from him. I wanted to see this great champion put up a fight and win this thing.
Now he’ll have to do just that if he wants to be the GOAT.
Holzhauer has had a lot of fun in the first three episodes and his tribute to Alex Trebek’s during Thursday night’s show was pretty awesome.
But now I need him to focus on the task at hand. And yes, I know these shows were shot back in December so I’m asking a man from the past to focus on the now, but whatever!
It’s clear that we Jeopardy fans want this tournament to go on for as long as possible. It’s never fun when we get to a championship series and one team just runs away from it.
That could very well happen tonight, which would be a shame.
Jennings is a great champ and we all respect the you-know-what out of him. But this is boring old January and we need more of Jennings vs. Holzhauer (and Brad Rutter) in our lives.
Not less!
So come on, Jeopardy James. Buckle down and get the job done for us. Because if you do, next Tuesday night’s fifth episode will be insane.
Thursday’s biggest winners: Russell Westbrook and OKC Thunder fans.
(Photo by Jeff Haynes/NBAE via Getty Images)
Westbrook returned to Oklahoma City on Thursday night for the first time as a member of the Houston Rockets and man was the crowd happy to see their former star. The video tribute was really awesome and the ovation he received upon being introduced was even better.
Quick hits: LSU’s great hype video… A fun “FOOTBALL GUY” quiz… Time for Ben Simmons to step up… And more!
The third episode of the Jeopardy! The Greatest of All Time tournament is in the books, and it was another fun night of trivia between three very smart people.
I will tell you about a fun moment when James Holzhauer paid a sweet (and funny) little tribute to Alex Trebek with his Final Jeopardy question. Jeopardy James didn’t know the answer so he wrote down “GHOST: Greatest Host of Syndicated TV.”
Here are the results from Thursday night — we’ll break it down to the two games the trio played, along with who won the entire second match (and again: SPOILER ALERT! Everything is below this awesome photo of Holzhauer and Alex Trebek):
(Photo by Eliot J. Schechter/NHLI via Getty Images)
Game 1
Tell me if you’ve heard this one before — Holzhauer led after the first round and Rutter was in third. And once again, Rutter got a chance with a Daily Double early in the second round but missed. Jennings went all in with 9,200 points on the other Daily Double and nailed the answer. By the end of Double Jeopardy, Jennings held the lead with 25,600, Holzhauer had 13,600 and Rutter had 8,800.
The Final Jeopardy category was U.S. Political History, and here was the clue:
These 2 now-defunct parties each gave the U.S. 4 presidents in the 19th century.
All three got the answer: What are the Democratic-Republican and Whigs?
And it’s worth noting they all bet ALL OF THEIR POINTS!
Their scores after the first game were:
Jennings: 51,200
Holzhauer: 27,200
Rutter: 17,600
Game 2
Holzhauer started the match getting answers left and right, accruing 5,000 points before finding a Daily Double, he went all in … and he missed! Jennings took the lead in the first round with Rutter in third. Rutter got a Daily Double correct, then followed that up with another DD that he got. Holzhauer struggled with a handful of wrong answers (to be fair, he had to be aggressive after that first game) and Jennings took advantage. After Double Jeopardy, Jennings led with 17,600, Rutter had 10,000 and Holzhauer had 7,400.
The Final Jeopardy category was 21st Century Oscar Winners and here was clue:
These 2 foreign-born directors have each won 2 Best Director Oscars, but none of their films has won Best Picture.
Here were the scores after Final Jeopardy, which none of them got: “Who are Alfonso Cuaron and Ang Lee?”
Jennings: 16,400
Rutter: 5,867
Holzhauer: 6,492
Overall Match winner
Remember, the winner of the night is the total points scored in both games together. So here are the final totals:
Jennings: 67,600
Holzhauer: 33,692
Rutter: 23,467
Ken Jennings won and has two victories, one away from the GOAT title and $1 million. Holzhauer has one win and Rutter has zero.
Brad Rutter has never lost a tournament to a human being, but it’s not looking good in the Jeopardy! The Greatest of All Time one.
Brad Rutter has never lost on Jeopardy! — well, to a human being at least. But he’s on his way to being defeated in a tournament by a person for the first time and has some work to do in the Jeopardy! The Greatest of All Time series if he wants to beat James Holzhauer and Ken Jennings and be declared the Jeopardy! GOAT.
Going up against the contestant with a 74-game win streak (Jennings) and another with the top-10 single-game winnings record (Holzhauer), Rutter more than deserves to compete among his fellow GOATs because he has the record for most money won on Jeopardy! with a cool $4,688,436 — and counting because he’s guaranteed at least $250,000 from this tournament.
Now, the vast majority of his winnings came from tournaments because when Rutter first appeared on the show in 2000, contestants were limited to five game wins before having to retire undefeated. So he won his five games and walked away with $55,102 and two Chevy Camaros. So he never lost in regular-season play.
Since then, Rutter has returned to Jeopardy! for several special tournaments and won nearly all of them. He won the 2001 Tournament of Champions, the Million Dollar Masters in 2002 (he won by $1), the Ultimate Tournament of Champions in 2005 (Jennings finished second) and the Battle of the Decades in 2014 (Jennings was second, again). In 2019 in the team-oriented All-Star Games, Team Brad came in first ahead of Team Ken.
The only time he wasn’t on top at the end of a tournament was in 2011 when he and Jennings competed in The IBM Challenge, facing off against Watson, an IBM computer. Naturally, Watson won, while Jennings finished second and Rutter third.
So again, Rutter has never lost to a human in a Jeopardy! regular-season game or tournament.
But in the Jeopardy! The Greatest of All Time tournament, Rutter hasn’t been off to the best start, and because of that, it’s fair to wonder how exactly he’s still never lost to a human competitor after finishing third in the first two matches (each match consists of two games with a combined score).
Despite ultimately winning the aforementioned tournaments against people, Rutter lost a game during two different tournaments, according to J! Archives, but still ended up with titles.
In the first of two final games in the 2001 Tournament of Champions, Rutter finished second. But in the last game of the final, he destroyed his competition to win the tournament championship and $100,000. Then in the 2005 Ultimate Tournament of Champions, Rutter tied for second in the Round 4, Game 3 contest before eventually winning the whole thing.
So when he finished third in the opening game of the first Jeopardy! GOAT match Tuesday — and in the second game that day, plus both games Wednesday — it was not the first time he’s lost a game within a tournament.
And although it seems like he’s solidifying his position as the third-best Jeopardy! player ever, he could still win this tournament.
Ahead of the third GOAT tournament episode Thursday, Jennings and Holzhauer each have one match win. They’ve both capitalized on Daily Doubles — much like Holzhauer did during his 32-game win streak in 2019 — while Rutter’s deficits have been largely tied to doing the opposite.
(Eric McCandless/ABC via AP)
For a while during Wednesday’s match, Rutter was playing better compared with the previous episode. He hung around with Holzhauer and Jennings for a little, and when he fell behind, it still wasn’t by a totally insurmountable amount. And then came the Daily Doubles.
In the second game, Rutter got a Daily Double off the first clue of Double Jeopardy. He went all in with his 3,800 points and gave an incorrect response about DNA. Then he got multiple clues wrong and was suddenly at -5,200, and he couldn’t dig himself out of the hole fast enough to have points to wager in Final Jeopardy. That ensured he’d finish third in yet another game.
Rutter’s past game losses didn’t prevent him from winning tournaments, and neither do his defeats in the Jeopardy! The Greatest of All Time tournament. But based on his performance compared with Holzhauer and Jennings, it looks like his undefeated streak is going to end.
That said, he’s going to walk away from this tournament with just shy of $5 million earned overall from the game show — at a minimum. He’s a GOAT, even if he doesn’t have the official title.
This is not your average Jeopardy! sports category.
Jeopardy! is no stranger to sports questions and, sometimes, full categories. And during the second match of the Jeopardy! The Greatest of All Time tournament on Wednesday night, fans were treated to the first full sports category in this special competition between James Holzhauer, Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter.
For this tournament’s format, each one-hour match is broken into two regular Jeopardy! games, and the player with the most points — not dollars, although the numerals are the same — from the combined two games wins the match. And then the first player to win three matches is the Jeopardy! GOAT.
In the first game of the second match, there was a football category in the opening regular Jeopardy round called College Football: After The Game.
As we’ve previously noted — and as any regular Jeopardy! viewer could tell you — the clues in this GOAT contest are noticeably more difficult than regular-season Jeopardy! But how many in this category do you think you could get right?
Thanks to J! Archive, we can take a look at the clues without the pressure of rapidly trying to answer before the GOATs. The answers are below, but try not to cheat.
Here we go…
200: In 2004, an NCAA award was established in the name of this center on the 1933 Michigan team & future politician
400: Before starring on a 4-letter TV drama, Mark Harmon starred for this 4-letter school as a QB, averaging 7.2 yards a carry in ’73
600: Nickname of the team that was led to an undefeated 1958 season by future brigadier general Pete Dawkins
800: In 1998, football fans debated who was the NCAA’s best QB: Peyton Manning or this WSU Cougar; their pro careers went opposite ways
1000: Steve Largent went on from this university to a HOF pro career, then returned home to represent the area in Congress
Before giving you the answers (or questions, really), please enjoy this delightful photo of Holzhauer and host Alex Trebek.
(Eliot J. Schechter/NHLI via Getty Images)
200: Who is Gerald Ford? (Holzhauer) 400: What is UCLA? (Rutter) 600: Who are the Army Black Knights? (Holzhauer) 800: Who is Ryan Leaf? (Holzhauer) 1000: What is the University of Tulsa? (No one got this clue.)
As a professional sports gambler, it’s hardly surprising Holzhauer got most of these questions right, but it’s still pretty impressive considering these are much more challenging than traditional Jeopardy! clues.
Jennings won the first match, Holzhauer won the second, and that means this tournament is guaranteed to go until at least Friday but could run into next week.
Brad Rutter > People making fun of him on Twitter.
This is the online version of our morning newsletter, The Morning Win. Subscribe to get irreverent and incisive sports stories, delivered to your mailbox every morning.
The second night of the Jeopardy! Greatest of All Time tournament wrapped up in dramatic fashion Wednesday night and continued to be the perfect type of distraction TV we need in what is a wild world these days.
I won’t spoil it for you, because that’s just not the type of person I am. I think the word you’re looking for here is “hero”. You can find the results right here with my pal Charles Curtis’ great breakdown of the second, one-hour episode.
But I will spoil it a little – Brad Rutter, much like on the first night, didn’t win. But he still won and will continue to win for as long as this tournament goes on.
Let me explain why.
Rutter made his first appearance on Jeopardy! way back in the year 2000 – when HDTV’s weren’t really a thing and Twitter definitely wasn’t a thing. Champions were only allowed five title defenses before they were sent home with a nice check and whatever prizes they won – Rutter got two cars for being an undefeated 5-day champion. That’s not bad.
But here we are in the year 2020 and this guy is still getting a chance to play Jeopardy! on the biggest stage this game has ever seen, as he has a front-row seat to what should be a classic battle between Ken Jennings (who won 74 straight games) and James Holzhauer (who had 32 straight wins). Chances are if you told Rutter 20 years that he’d be in this position he sign up in a hurry.
Rutter is here because he is the record-holder for money earned on the show with $4,876,036, which he has won through various special games and events over the years. That’s not bad, either.
Think he cares about all the jokes being made about him on Twitter that past two nights by people who will never get a chance to even play this wonderful game?
Yeah, I don’t think so either.
None on this should be embarrassing for Rutter. He’s living the dream of many Jeopardy! fans, getting to play more of the legendary game while competing head-to-head with two incredible legends. Plus, he’s won more money than both players, which is something I’d take over the win streaks.
Chances are things will continue to not go his way in the remaining episodes of this tournament.
And chances are he couldn’t care less.
Because his lengthy and profitable run on this show if proof that he’s a winner, no matter how many Holzhauer beats him to the buzzer.
Wednesday’s biggest winner: Mike McCarthy.
McCarthy waited until he was officially introduced as the new coach of the Dallas Cowboys before admitting that he lied a little bit in his job interview with Jerry Jones. I mean, who hasn’t done that before? (I haven’t and if any of you @ my boss about this I will deny all. Also, if my boss subscribes to this newsletter I’d like to wish you a happy Thursday, Nate.)
Quick hits: Ed Orgeron shotgunning Red Bulls… Rudolph’s gloves go for a ride… Garrett’s awkward meeting with Jones… And more!
– Vikings TE Kyle Rudolph thought a reporter was going to use his game-worn gloves to raise money for charity. Instead, they ended up on Ebay. But then a fan did something awesome.
