As Ken Jennings gets ready to start the new season of Jeopardy! as a permanent co-host alongside Mayim Bialik, the long line of contestants he left in the dust have some mixed emotions about his new position. Known as the KJL, or Ken Jennings Losers, these group of contestants are still smarting from Jennings’ legendary run in the mid-2000s when he plowed through records and mauled everyone in his path after Jeopardy! lifted a cap on winning streaks. Now, he’s the host, and those old wounds still sting.
“When he was starting as host, my mother about lost her mind,” Merritt Hamilton Allen, KJL 122, told The Ringer. “My mother never got over her rage.”
It also didn’t help that Jennings’ epic winning run was facilitated by a significant change in how Jeopardy! handled competitors who were repeatedly dominating episodes:
Jennings’s streak was not without controversy. In its early seasons, Jeopardy! capped champions at five straight wins, at which point they were sent home with their cash total and a car. The five-day limit was lifted just a year before Jennings arrived, and some contestants—including more than a few five-day champs who were certain they could have gone on longer—cried foul. The New York Times declared Jennings “the most annoying man in game show history” and insisted he was holding poor Jeopardy! hostage, but it made no difference: On he went.
However, not every KJL is mad about Jennings’ rise to the podium. In fact, former opponent Jeff Suchard thinks the situation is a great opportunity for Jennings to make a solid gesture to the players he defeated.
“What I’m really hoping for is Ken to host a ‘Ken Jennings Losers [KJL] Tournament’ on Jeopardy!” Suchard told The Ringer. “Where they invite back the one or two dozen of his defeated opponents who really looked like they might have had a chance against him.”
(Via The Ringer)