Player of the Year - 2014

[MikeK]

Going all the way back to the original point, I don't see how you can have a serious question of "who was the best player of the previous year" when it includes someone whose name or gender I do not recall whose only "accomplishment" was punching out the one correct hole out of fifty on The Price is Right.

And even Brian got that one wrong.  There was a $25,000 (top prize) winner on one of the Million Dollar Spectaculars from roughly a decade ago.  (Yes, I know he's talking daytime.  Qualifiers have meanings.)

Just like how we occasionally debate about what is or isn't a game show, we can debate about who is or isn't player of the year because everybody's criteria is different.  Unlike the game show/not a game show debate, this debate is one I think is an exercise in futility.

[Thunder]

It's the same as "to be the best you have to beat the best," until someone can knock the Seahawks of Seattle off their perch, they will be the best football team in the NFL. Someone can not like it or come up with some other way to measure it but they won the Super Bowl and no one else did.

Point of Order.

At the end of Week 7 when the Seahawks of Seattle lost to the Rams of St. Louis to drop to 3-3, the Seahawks were not "the best football team in the NFL". They were the defending champions. To believe otherwise is Crap of Horse.

/Unless you're Pete of Prisco, who is Insane of the Membrane.

[clemon79]

At the end of Week 7 when the Seahawks of Seattle lost to the Rams of St. Louis to drop to 3-3, the Seahawks were not "the best football team in the NFL". They were the defending champions. To believe otherwise is Crap of Horse.

It's a marathon, not a sprint. By that argument they were no longer the best football team in the NFL at the exact moment someone fumbled.

[Thunder]

I wouldn't change my mind on "the best"after every play. However, it's customary for analysts and pundits to do weekly power rankings. After that Week #7 loss to St. Louis, there was a consensus that Seattle wasn't playing the best football in the league. They were still the defending champions.

ETA: Citation.

[TLEberle]

You can say it in whatever supercilious way you want or bombard with GIFs where words would do but it doesn't detract from the fact that the champion is the best team by nature of defeating everyone else and until the moment they're eliminated they're still the top of the heap. A game of Jeopardy isn't won with a single question, but if you get enough of those single questions right you can win a whole of money. Football doesn't award double points in the fourth quarter or count later games as double (except for those divisional contests), but I'd rather be winning later than sooner because it puts that team in a better position for the post-season.

/I thought "beat the best" was equally likely to be a rassling thing or something sad by a football coach.
//as it happens, there are still precisely three other people in this thread who I think are contributing.

[Thunder]

No. That's not a fact in sports no matter how much you claim it to be. As another example, look at the 1998 Florida Marlins. They won the World Series in 1997 and within a few weeks started a fire sale that dropped the 1998 version of that team to a 54-108 record.

If you want to say that the Marlins were the best team in MLB until they were eliminated from the 1998 season playoff race, you're welcome to do it. Very few others would subscribe to your "fact" and way of thinking.

Anyway. My answer is Julia Collins. She had an amazing Jeopardy run.

[TLEberle]

If you disagree that's reward enough.

[jjman920]

Julia Collins. Her run was amazing and she made history. That history, to me, outweighs that she didn't win the ToC.

When a team wins the Super Bowl, they're the best team in football until the beginning of the following season. Then, in my opinion, the title is up for grabs, able to switch from one team to the next, on the myriads of power rankings across numerous publications all for it to be decided again come January.

[PYLdude]

For Wheel of Fortune, who would be player of the year: someone who barnstormed the game, someone who converted an improbable set of letters into a bonus round win, or someone who won ten times more than anyone else that year because the pins fell just right in the tumblers to allow her to win the million dollars?

Well, as I am prone to overanalyzing stuff (blessing/curse), I wouldn't count the middle example as "player of the year" caliber, impressive as it was. Your other two examples are tougher to do. It's not easy to win such a crapton of money in the front game of Wheel- at least not Ninety Thousand Freaking Clams. As far as Sarah Manchester's big win, you can look at it as just being another seven figure prize, but who's to say that she couldn't have easily spun $32,000 on the Bonus Wheel or lost the Million Dollar Wedge to a Bankrupt? I've said it before, and I'll do so again...that's why the Wheel million dollar round works. You have to earn your way into playing it (land on wedge, guess correct letter to pick it up, solve that particular puzzle, avoid Bankrupt for the rest of the match, and win the game).

What would a Millionaire contestant need to achieve to be level with ten or twenty wins on Jeopardy, or indeed being the grand champion?

Simplest way, win the million or at least see the million dollar question. Bonus points if you did so without skipping past the $250k and $500k questions.

To get that far is worthy of praise, especially in this day and age where they've made it tougher on the contestants to get into the upper echelon (although, realistically, I think the switch to the shuffle sort of alleviated that issue).

Know what? I think you could give it to Mark Labbett because he has as much claim to it as anyone else.

That's a very stout point. Sure, he's more co-host/panelist than he is contestant, but who else is more dominant than Mark is on a regular basis?

[Jimmy Owen]

The most memorable contestant for me was Julia Collins.  I'd also choose her as the best of 2014.