Thursday Quickie Quiz & Single Digits: Donovan McNabb, Kate Smith, James Holzhauer, Rhys Hoskins
THURSDAY’S QUICKIE QUIZ
>>> Former Eagles QB Donovan McNabb – back in the news last weekend – was the second overall selection in the 1999 NFL Draft. Who were Nos. 1 and 3?
(Answer Below)
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THURSDAY’S SINGLE DIGITS
>>> So, unless you’ve been living under a rock – or under a Kate Smith statue – for the past two weeks, you must know who James Holzhauer is, but in case you don’t . . .
He is the current Jeopardy champion who is making mincemeat of one of America’s most beloved game shows. Why are we interested?
Well, other than our simple love of numbers, there is this:
He is a professional sports gambler from Las Vegas.
The keys to his success – aside from being stupidly smart – is his expert use of the buzzer (the most underrated aspect of a winning Jeopardy strategy) and his aggressive (and sometimes fun) use of the Daily Double wager.
I have often said – and you can ask my wife for proof – the Daily Double wagers, even having increased generally over the years, are almost always vastly under bet. He is not doing that. He is all in whenever he can, and when he can’t, he bets huge figures that corresponds to things such as important dates in his family’s life.
(Me, I would somehow find a way to bet the final scores of some of my favorite sporting events. “I’ll wager $4,133, Alex” . . . “How about $4,948, Alex?”)
Anyway, FiveThirtyEight.com has done a deep dive on his Daily Double play and the trends of the DD wagers through the years. And Holzhauer has been written up in dozens of other places, but one thing we wanted to see was the final scores for all three contestants in all of his games.
Thanks to j-archive.com (which just might be the greatest website not in the sports-reference.com or newspapers.com realms), we were able to throw together the list below.
By the way, the wife and I are a handful of Jeopardy episodes behind on the DVR, but even though we know Holzhauer is going to win before we sit down and hit “play,” it is still fun to watch.
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>>> One good thing about the Phillies’ offense disappearing for three games (two runs) was the time of the games. After having 15 three-hour-plus contests in their first 20 games of the season, the Phillies played 2:58 Sunday, 2:46 Monday and 2:43 Tuesday. That streak ended Wednesday when they stopped the Mets, 6-0, in 3:21 . . . which would have been 3:20 had Rhys Hoskins had a normal home run trot in the ninth inning rather than duplicate my ninth grade 100-yard dash time of 34 seconds.
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>>> If you throw out the first half of Game 1 and the last half of Game 5, the Sixers outscored the Nets by 383-313 over 12 quarters of play.
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>>> Here is how the Tampa Bay-Columbus scoring broke down in their first-round series, won by the Blue Jackets in the most unlikely NHL sweep you will ever see:
TB 3, CBJ 0 . . . First 17:50
CBJ 19, TB 5 . . . Last 222:10
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QUICKIE QUIZ ANSWER
>>> Fellow QBs Tim Couch (No. 1 to Cleveland) and Akili Smith (No. 3 to Cincinnati) sandwiched McNabb in the top three spots of the 1999 NFL Draft.