The stats for ESPN Jeopardy are in, giving us a good look at which ESPN personalities and a few celebrities are actually the most knowledgeable when it comes to sports. As it turns out, one ESPN investigative journalist knows a lot more about sports trivia than anyone else, while some others might need to brush up in certain areas.
18 participants from ESPN and NFL Network, along with the celebrity guests, competed across six quarterfinals, three semifinals, and one championship round.
Fair warning: there are spoilers below. If you haven’t seen the show yet, it is streaming on ESPN Unlimited, Disney+, and Hulu. So without further ado, let’s get to the stats.
Below are the full rankings for each contestant, sorted by the total number of correct responses they gave throughout the season. The second number is the percentage of questions the contestant attempted and answered correctly.
- Jeremy Schaap: 134 (87.6%)
- Kyle Brandt: 100 (83.3%)
- Peter Schrager: 73 (83.9%)
- Jon Hamm: 69 (81.2%)
- Kevin Negandhi: 43 (79.6%)
- Keegan-Michael Key: 42 (79.2%)
- Jay Harris: 32 (94.1%)
- Domonique Foxworth: 31 (70.5%)
- Madelyn Burke: 28 (70.0%)
- Hannah Storm: 13 (44.8%)
- Kimberley A. Martin: 13 (81.3%)
- Adam Pally: 12 (63.2%)
- Omar Raja: 12 (80.0%)
- Amina Smith: 11 (64.7%)
- MJ Acosta-Ruiz: 11 (68.8%)
- Christine Williamson: 9 (90.0%)
- Jamie Erdahl: 9 (56.3%)
- Manti Te’o: 8 (72.7%)
One reason why Schaap, Brandt, and Schrager dominate at the top of this list is that they are what we will call “confident buzzers,” or contestants who couldn’t stop themselves from answering questions. Especially in the quarterfinals, all three of these contestants dominated their competition by “buzzing in” to answer questions.
For example, in quarterfinal 1, Jeremy Schaap buzzed in 52 times, compared to nine for Christine Williamson and 15 for Kimberley A. Martin. In quarterfinal 2, Peter Schrager buzzed in 43 times, compared to 14 each for Omar Raja and MJ Acosta-Ruiz. In quarterfinal 5, Kyle Brandt had 44 buzzes, while Jamie Erdahl did just 15 buzzes, and Manti Te’o was at 11.
You might think that simply answering questions correctly is the key to Jeopardy, but the game is much more strategic than that.
In the quarterfinals, Keegan-Michael Key led the way in terms of percentage of questions answered correctly. He went 28 of 31 in his quarterfinal. Going into Final Jeopardy, he was ahead of Jon Hamm by 2,400 points. The Final Jeopardy question asked what was a 2-minute penalty in the NHL and 15 yards in the NFL, but not a penalty if you are Dock Ellis pitching a no-hitter in 1970. Both Hamm and Key answered the question correctly, but Hamm won by wagering all his money, while Key wagered just 3,000.
On the other side, SportsCenter’s Hannah Storm put up the worst performance in the quarterfinals, going only 13-for-29. She had some easy opportunities to do better. In the “actual 2025 fantasy team names” category, Storm, along with Jay Harris and Amina Smith, did not understand a reference to “bang the trash can slowly” for an MLB team. Storm served as a host for the Houston Astros postgame show in the ‘80s, when they presumably weren’t cheating.
The competition between those who like to buzz and those who are correct came to a head during the semifinals. SportsCenter host Jay Harris went a perfect 14 for 14 in the first semifinal. However, despite having a lower percentage of correct answers, Jeremy Schaap buzzed in 46 times and led Harris 23,600 to 8,200 coming into Final Jeopardy. Unfortunately, Harris did not know which team former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz felt “deeply sorry” for selling. With a big smile, Harris answered the Harlem Globetrotters and staked nothing. Schaap, despite only staking 2,000, was correct and advanced to the final.
The high-accuracy Keegan-Michael Key was pitted against big buzzer Kyle Brandt in the third semifinal, but the game went very differently from both of their quarterfinals. Key, who had the highest correct percentage in the first round, had the second-worst percentage in the semifinals, going 14 for 22. Brandt also had a much lower buzzer advantage, buzzing in 38 times compared to 21 for Key and 15 times for Domonique Foxworth. He was still able to do very well in his answers, going 35-of-42 overall and advancing to the final.
In the final semifinal, confident buzzer-beater Peter Schrager was pitted against Jon Hamm and Madelyn Burke. Unlike many of the other games, Schrager and Hamm had a similar number of buzzes, 38 for Schrager compared to 31 for Hamm. Burke had only 19. Schrager would go 32 for 41, while Hamm was 29 for 34. However, Hamm dominated in the Daily Doubles and entered Final Jeopardy with 25,000 points, the most for any contestant at that point. That allowed Hamm to play it smart. He didn’t know who the youngest player in the NBA to score 70 points in a game was, and Schrager did, but he had such a margin that even though Schrager bet all 11,800 of his points, Hamm still won by one point.
That left Schaap, Hamm, and Brandt in the championship. Unfortunately, there really wasn’t much drama. Schaap dominated both on the buzzer, with 47 buzzes compared to 17 for Hamm and 24 for Brandt, and in percentage of correct answers, going 43 for 47 compared to 14 for 18 for Hamm and 24 for 29 for Brandt. That left Schaap with 22,000 points entering Final Jeopardy, compared to 3,900 for Hamm and 2,700 for Brandt. Schaap was the only one who knew which nation became the smallest country to qualify for a World Cup and get its first MLB Hall of Famer.
For better or worse, ESPN Jeopardy made one thing very clear: Jeremy Schaap knows a lot more sports trivia than just about anyone else.
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