What To Know
- Drew Goins, inspired by Ken Jennings’ legendary Jeopardy! run and, particularly his loss, decided to compete on the show to “avenge” Jennings’ legacy.
- Goins’ Jeopardy! journey included initial defeat, a Second Chance Tournament win, a runner-up finish in the Champions Wildcard, and participation in multiple tournaments.
Most people want to go on Jeopardy! for the money or to test their smarts, but Drew Goins wanted to avenge Ken Jennings. When he saw the 74-game champion lose, he knew he had to be on the game show.
Goins, a journalist from Washington, D.C., appeared on the Atlantic’s Podcast, an outlet that he writes for, on August 20. Podcaster and writer Hanna Rosin talked to the former champion about his time on Jeopardy! and what inspired him to go on it in the first place.
He lost his initial game during Final Jeopardy. However, he got to play again during the Second Chance Tournament, which he won, and advanced to the Champions Wildcard. After he finished as the first runner-up, he thought his Jeopardy! dreams were over. However, Celebrity Jeopardy! champion, Lisa Ann Walter bowed out of the Tournament of Champions that season, leaving room for him to take her spot.
Goins lost during the third semifinal game. He was then invited to play in the Jeopardy! Invitational Tournament, where he lost in the third semifinal game. Then Drew and his brother played on Season 2 of Pop Culture Jeopardy!, where they lost their quarterfinal game.
“So, what was the first moment when you saw Jeopardy! and thought, ‘That’s me. I wanna do that. That speaks to me?’” Rosin asked Goins.
“I think this is gonna be a common answer for people of my age, which is: the original run of Ken Jennings,” Goins replied. But that’s not all; Jennings’ loss particularly inspired him.
“He is obviously the host now. He won 74 games before that in the mid-aughts. And I remember watching and thinking, ‘Oh my God, you know, this dweeby software engineer is the coolest person I have ever seen,’” Goins said. “Ken will say he’s still kind of amazed that people find him cool or whatever. But I have this very vivid childhood memory of being on a family beach vacation and scurrying back in from the ocean because it was almost 7 o’clock, and Ken was still playing, and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00.”
“And that day at the, you know, boardwalk, I had won some inflatable raft to take into the ocean, and I spent the episode blowing it up with my mouth. We did not have a pump or anything. And so by the end of the episode, I was so lightheaded from blowing up this raft. And then Ken loses,” Goins continued.
He said that as a middle-schooler, he thought he was hallucinating and losing too much oxygen from blowing up the float. Goins turned to his dad to ask him if that really happened, and his dad told him it had.
“I went on to avenge the legacy of Ken Jennings,” the contestant said.
Jeopardy!, Season 43, weekdays, September 2026, check local listings