I want to start with a big thank you to everyone who takes time out of your week to read these silly blogs and vote in our tournaments. I really do look forward to this every single year and hope you do too. I’m gonna throw out the tip jar one more time, just for funsies. If you enjoy what we do here and feel so inclined to throw a couple Dollary-Do’s my way to help pay for the sites and whatnot, feel free to Venmo me @ josh-sorensen-5 or PayPal @ JoshSorensen5. Enough with the my blabbering, let’s get to the good stuff!
Our Championship Round came down to a 1 seed and a 2 seed that I think most of us could have picked to run the gauntlet at the outset of our voting. It was quite the journey for our two finalists but they persevered to make it to the finale.
The last few years were probably the least surprising of our 10 years together. This go around was a mixed bag as far as upsets and Cinderella stories go. We didn’t lose our first 1 seed until the Elite 8 but half of those bowed out in that round. Half of our Final 4 was 1 seeds. After two years where we only had one double digit seed make it to the Sweet 16, we continued that trend. The higher seeds have just been way too strong in the last few years. Although that 12 seed fell one vote short of making the Elite 8 and continuing their Cinderella run.
From last year’s championship post: “After three straight years that we had run though an entire bracket without having any team catch the ever elusive 100-0 final score, we got a grand total of one this year – 2 seed Oscar Meyer’s “I’d Love To Be an Oscar Meyer Weiner” over 15 seed “Bumble Bee Tuna.”. Well, we went through this year’s entire bracket without anyone going 100-0 so that makes 4 out of the past 5 years. It’s so tough to pull off.”
This year saw THREE 100-0 victories in the Round of 64 which was somewhat offset by an absolutely wild SIX 50-50 ties. After adding one tie in the Round of 32, we end our Tournament with a record 7 ties being broken by Mrs. Clumsy Optimist. She most definitely did not enjoy all of that.
Time to find out how the Championship Round fared. Remember all “scores” are in percentages.
Championship
We’ll start with a little recap of how our two favorite SNL sketches worked their way to the ‘Ship.
The left side of our bracket was a battle of 1 seeds. The Chris Farley Region (2000-2009) had 2000’s ‘More Cowbell’ as the overall 1 seed and they got shot out of a canon in the Round of 64 and captured one of the other 100-0 wins as they sent 16 seed ‘The Shooting AKA Dear Sister’ home early. The Round of 32 played out exactly as it did in the John Belushi Region as the 1 seed took out 8 seed ‘Lazy Sunday’ by a final of 73-27. The Sweet 16 saw ‘More Cowbell’ get their biggest test so far, but move on easily against 5 seed ‘D*** In a Box’ by a score of 75-25. The Elite 8 gave our 1 seed a match-up against Cinderella 7 seed ‘What Up With That?’ and they barely broke a sweat as the 1 seed also got the victory 82-18 and took the Chris Farley Region by force. This Semi-Final was back and forth throughout the voting period and I truly had no idea how it would end up. At the close of voting, our Chris Farley Region representative ‘More Cowbell’ got a late bucket and pulls out a 1-vote victory (!) over John Belushi Region (1975-1989) champ ‘Word Association’ by a final of 54-46.
Where the left side of our bracket was represented by 1 seeds, we had a couple of upsets on the right side. The Phil Hartman Region (1990-1999) 2 seed started off with our third 100-0 victory as ‘Celebrity Jeopardy!’ destroyed 15 seed ‘Opera Man’. A third straight Round of 32 73-27 outcome saw our 2 seed move on over 7 seed ‘Spartans Cheerleaders’. The Sweet 16 was a shock to me as ‘Celebrity Jeopardy!’ took out a massive contender in 3 seed ‘Wayne’s World’ by a final of 87-13. Not even close! The Regional Final gave us a classic 1v2 matchup as the 2 seed got a 1-vote victory over what I thought was a sketch that could win the whole thing in 1 seed ‘Matt Foley: Van Down By the River’ – the final here was 54-46. Whereas the first Semi-final came down to a single vote, this one was out of reach early and despite a valiant effort at a late comeback, our Phil Hartman Region champ gets the victory and moves on to the Championship! In a battle of the ‘Jeopardy!’ parodies, ‘Celebrity Jeopardy!’ outlasted Norm Macdonald Region (2010-2025) champ ‘Black Jeopardy!’ by a final of 67-33.
When I made my bracket picks before this whole thing started, I had chosen ‘More Cowbell’ as the overall 1 seed and my pick to win the whole thing. They had some challenges along the way but had gotten to the Championship on the back of a 1 vote victory. The Championship Round voting was absolutely amazing. I checked in on this matchup 5 or 6 times over the course of of the week and either of these sketches was ahead back-and-forth but never by more than 2 votes. By the end of voting on Wednesday, our Phil Hartman Region 2 seed ‘Celebrity Jeopardy!’ held on to a late lead and gets a 1-vote (!!!) win over 1 seed ‘More Cowbell’ to take the Championship by a final of 52-48! Even though this Final was a 1vs2 affair, this feels like a bit of an upset.
One last time, here is our 2025 Champion and our favorite SNL sketch of all time – ‘Celebrity Jeopardy’!!! (In all of it’s iterations)
Sean Connery, Burt Reynolds, Jerry Lewis – S-Words
John Travolta, Burt Reynolds, Michael Keaton – Kick Me
Sean Connery, Minnie Driver, Jeff Goldblum – Therapists
Sean Connery, Adam Sandler, Tom Cruise – Famous Titles
Sean Connery, Calista Flockhart, Nicholas Cage – The Pen Is Mightier
Sean Connery, Burt Reynolds, French Stewart – Turd Ferguson
Sean Connery, Hilary Swank, Keanu Reeves – Foreign Flicks
Sean Connery, Robin Williams, Catherine Zeta-Jones – An Album Cover
Sean Connery, Anne Heche, Chris Tucker – Famous Horsemen
Sean Connery, Dave Matthews, Björk – I Have a Chardonnay
Sean Connery, Bill Cosby, Sharon Osbourne – Japan US Relations
Sean Connery, Kathie Lee, Tom Hanks – Catch These Men
Sean Connery, Justin Bieber, Tony Bennett, Burt Reynolds, Christoph Waltz, and Matthew McConaughey from SNL 40 – Who Reads & Let It Snow
‘Celebrity Jeopardy!’ joins our former champions The Beatles, The Sandlot, Breakfast Tacos & Burritos, The Fresh Price of Bel-Air, Whataburger, Elf, “Friend Like Me”, and “I Don’t Wanna Grow Up” and “Scotty Doesn’t Know”.
Thank you all once again for taking time to vote in this tournament. I do apologize for the Facebook algorithm deciding not to show it in a lot of people’s feeds as much until literally the last two posts. Hopefully they can get that figured out soon. I do hope this thing was as fun for you as it was for me. We’ll do it again next March! As usual, I’ve got some ideas bouncing around in the old noggin for themes (believe it or not, there’s a spreadsheet…there’s ALWAYS a spreadsheet) but I’m always open and looking for ideas for next year’s bracket. If you have any suggestions, feel free to get in touch with me on Facebook or Twitter.
After knocking 64 of the best, most perfect SNL sketches of the past 50 years down to a final Champion, our completed bracket looks like this (Click to expand. It gets a little crowded):
The Clumsy Optimist 