Who is the ESPN Jeopardy! Champion?

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

From the Alex Rebecca stage at Sony Pictures Studios, this is Inside Jeopardy!

SPEAKER_2 (0:08)

My question is, what was your response, and did you get yet another one right? What is Curacao? That is correct. That's Island Nation now has an MLB Hall of Famer in Andrew Jones. What was your wager?

2,000 points, officially, you are the ESPN Jeopardy!

Michael Davies (0:28)

Champion.

SPEAKER_2 (0:29)

You get $500,000 for your charity.

Michael Davies (0:33)

Hello, and welcome to a special edition of Inside Jeopardy! We are here on the set of ESPN Jeopardy! with our newly crowned champion, Jeremy Schaap.

Jeremy Schaap (0:41)

Thank you.

Michael Davies (0:42)

How's it feeling?

Jeremy Schaap (0:43)

It's still kind of surreal, actually. You know, we played the three rounds, and I felt in some ways that I was being set up for failure in each round, that I was going to be taken down by one of the other competitors. So I kept waiting for kind of the trap door to come out, but it didn't. And so I'm just kind of shocked and thrilled.

Buzzy Cohen (1:10)

Jeremy, you have brought great honor to the worldwide leader in sports. You and Mina Kimes, our recent champion in Celebrity Jeopardy! All-Stars as well.

It's been very good times for ESPN within the Jepperverse. But I understand that when you were first contacted about appearing on this program, there was some misunderstanding.

Jeremy Schaap (1:35)

Well, I don't think of it as a misunderstanding. I think it was a miscommunication.

Buzzy Cohen (1:39)

Okay.

Jeremy Schaap (1:40)

I came away from the first call that I received a few weeks ago under the impression that I was going to be doing Celebrity Jeopardy! Even though it seemed odd to me that I would be of the stature to qualify.

But I was like, I'll embrace it. Okay. So I called a friend of mine who had been on regular Jeopardy! a couple of times and he told me, all right, this is what you should study. I mean, it probably won't help, but bone up on your Shakespeare, first lines from Shakespeare, that kind of stuff.

Buzzy Cohen (2:07)

So you study, flashcards, you read books, and then how long did you live under this misapprehension?

Jeremy Schaap (2:13)

It was at least two or three weeks, I think. Yeah. I mean, if this had been about much to do about nothing, I think I would have done quite well.

Buzzy Cohen (2:22)

Very good.

Michael Davies (2:22)

So only a few days passed before you realized they were actually playing ESPN Jeopardy!

Jeremy Schaap (2:27)

No, it was a long time.

Michael Davies (2:28)

It was like- No, I mean, before you came to play, how many days did you have?

Buzzy Cohen (2:32)

Once you realized- I feel like that was like a week.

Michael Davies (2:33)

To switch gears, okay? A week.

Buzzy Cohen (2:34)

Yeah.

Michael Davies (2:35)

And yet you come out in the quarterfinals, you kill it, and you become our top seed heading into the semifinals.

Jeremy Schaap (2:43)

Yeah. I felt after the first round, especially disappointed in myself, because there were some-

Buzzy Cohen (2:50)

As Joe Bucca said, you are the Eeyore of our competition.

Jeremy Schaap (2:53)

I know. But it's totally legitimate. This is not some affectation. It really was like, oh, I'm never going to live that down. The people I work with, they're all sports people. Trust me, no one's going to say, that was amazing. You got whatever it was. They're going to say how-

Michael Davies (3:10)

47 correct responses in your first game. Out of how many?

Jeremy Schaap (3:13)

Like 91 That's like 44 I didn't get.

Buzzy Cohen (3:16)

Yeah. There we go.

Jeremy Schaap (3:18)

That's a lot. That is what they will remember. They won't let me forget, and that's the kind of universe I live in. It's not about-

you know what it's like in TV. What do they say when you go out to do something? It's don't blank it up. It's not like, be a champion today. It's not the positive messaging you get from a Lombardy.

Buzzy Cohen (3:38)

That's not how we run things here at J.

Jeremy Schaap (3:39)

No, no, this is totally different. This is the West Coast.

Buzzy Cohen (3:41)

So 47 correct responses, a runaway in your quarterfinal. You then go as the number one seed into our semifinals. You're playing against Kevin and Gandhi and Jay Harris. Again, 45 correct responses of 68 attempts.

Another runaway victory, two in a row.

Jeremy Schaap (4:01)

Well, I think I just got lucky. I mean, there were some good categories for me.