Player of the Year - 2014

[brianhenke]

   Who do you think was the game show contestant of the year? My pick is Julia Collins, because of her 20-game streak on J!. Had she won the ToC, she would have pretty much won this in a runaway, but there were many others who might have won the honor, like Arthur Chu, ToC winner Ben Ingram, Tournament of the Decades winner Brad Rutter, WOF millionaire Sarah Manchester, NEW BABY BUGGY guy Emil DePont, Matt DeSanto and his $92,000 Wheel haul, Linda who was the first $25K winner in Punch-a-Bunch, and so many others.

  Once again, who was the best of 2014?

    Brian

   

[TLEberle]

Comparing players from Jeopardy, Wheel of Fortune, The Price is Right, and others (no one from Millionaire, Family Feud or LMAD?) is a bit like saying who is the best pinball player by comparing point totals, or comparing two boxers by their point totals in different fights.

For Jeopardy it's either Ingram or Rutter. I have a hard time giving an award to somebody who lost a tournament to another entrant.

[Kevin Prather]

Comparing players from Jeopardy, Wheel of Fortune, The Price is Right, and others (no one from Millionaire, Family Feud or LMAD?) is a bit like saying who is the best pinball player by comparing point totals, or comparing two boxers by their point totals in different fights.

It's more like saying "Who's the better arcade game player? That pinball player or that Pac Man player?"

The OP didn't ask for the best player of the year, though. Just "the player of the year". I'd cast my vote for Arthur Chu because of a) his dominant Jeopardy performance (despite losing to Ingram), and b) the added attention his polarizing style brought to Jeopardy. If you had to pick one game show contestant that got people outside our niche talking the most, it'd have to be Arthur.

[PYLdude]

For Jeopardy it's either Ingram or Rutter. I have a hard time giving an award to somebody who lost a tournament to another entrant.

Yet, combined, both of them only won what, seven games in 2014?

The question's based on what they were able to accomplish in 2014, not who beat them or who didn't. As impressive as Ben Ingram was in the tournament knocking off the two most successful contestants of the year, he played his regular games in 2013. And I'm going to use the same logic on your Rutter argument that you used on my argument about the third Wheel millionaire being included in notable moments: it's old hat. Rutter's won four tournaments now, it's not like he did something he hasn't done before. It's not a big deal.

It comes down to Ben's opponents in the TOC final, and even though one of them won a good chunk of cash, got into the final in his own right (as in two wins, and not having to rely on a wildcard to get through to the semis) and had people talking about Jeopardy based on his style of play, the other joined Ken Jennings as the only players with a 20+ game winning streak and is the winningest female contestant in regular play in the show's history. And that's why I agree with Henke's pick.

[TLEberle]

Well then. That's settled.

[pacdude]

I throw a vote for Ingram. His incredible performance on Game Show Gauntlet was truly indicative of a champion.

[TLEberle]

So wait a minute; Brian asked two questions: who is the best, and who is "the player". One of them is easier to quantify than the other, but "the contestant of the year" is wide open to debate. It could be someone who was entertaining and likeable and who gave us a great performance even if she didn't win the Tournament of Champions because the show she was on doesn't have one. If I want to say that Chris Palmer is my Player of the Year because I enjoyed watching him blow twenty grand more than I enjoyed anybody else in the calendar year, it's my prerogative to do so.

And from what I can gather, Brian didn't make a pick so you can't really agree with it.

[WarioBarker]

Man, this is a tough choice -- I'll go with Julia Collins, partly for her amazing winning streak but also because IIRC she didn't get near as much media attention as Arthur Chu did.

And from what I can gather, Brian didn't make a pick so you can't really agree with it.

Unless I've misunderstood what you're saying, yes he did.

Who do you think was the game show contestant of the year? My pick is Julia Collins, because of her 20-game streak on J!. Had she won the ToC, she would have pretty much won this in a runaway,

[PYLdude]

So wait a minute; Brian asked two questions: who is the best, and who is "the player".

And his intent was to have both questions mean the same thing. Not that he needed to do that, and his post certainly wasn't concise (most of that I could've done without), but he's asking the same question twice. He just worded it differently.

"the contestant of the year" is wide open to debate. It could be someone who was entertaining and likeable and who gave us a great performance even if she didn't win the Tournament of Champions because the show she was on doesn't have one.

Absolutely right. And winning a ToC certainly doesn't hurt if the show does. But here, to me, is the catch.

Let's say that Jeopardy didn't have enough contestants to have the ToC last calendar year and instead had to do so in the forthcoming year. Why then should we automatically value the performance of the winner of the tournament over the other thousand plus contestants on various shows who may put together a big string of wins and such? Not that I feel it's devalued, but participating in a ToC (if your.show indeed has one) is along the same lines as playing in the playoffs of a sport. A whole different ball game and the winner of the MVP might not be the same person who'd contend for the award in the regular season. Especially if he had an MVP caliber year the season before (and Ben Ingram certainly did that, which is why if you asked me the same question last year I wouldn't have issue with the choice).

[TLEberle]

I don't get it. Whatever your point was it was buried in so many words. The team that wins the Super Bowl is the champion until the next team wins the Super Bowl. If a 7-and-9 team wins the Super Bowl and a 12-4 team doesn't, it means that the 12-4 team is incapable of winning in the tournament.

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

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

[Kevin Prather]

The team that wins the Super Bowl is the champion until the next team wins the Super Bowl. If a 7-and-9 team wins the Super Bowl and a 12-4 team doesn't, it means that the 12-4 team is incapable of winning in the tournament.

Not sure where you were going with that one. Many Super Bowl winners have lost Super Bowls as well.

[TLEberle]

Many Super Bowl winners have lost Super Bowls as well.

At which point they are no longer the best in the league.

[Kevin Prather]

Many Super Bowl winners have lost Super Bowls as well.

At which point they are no longer the best in the league.

No longer the best in the league, yes. That's what I thought you were going for, not "incapable of winning in the tournament".

[TLEberle]

No longer the best in the league, yes. That's what I thought you were going for, not "incapable of winning in the tournament".

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.

It goes to the question of "what do you do if there's no tournament"? I suppose you have three rubrics for who you would call the best: who won the last Tournament of Champions, who won the most games/most money in the qualifying period or who won the largest single cash prize in that tournament qualification period. Tom Nissley won eight games and $235,000 but no one is in a hurry to proclaim him the best of that "season" because Roger Craig won $77,000 in one game and he won the Tournament of Champions. In 1990 Bob Blake set two different winnings records and won the TOC, but it is Officer Spangenberg who is the better remembered because he was the first to break through an odometer figure.

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.

[clemon79]

It's the same as "to be the best you have to beat the best,"

"Close."

/whooooo!