JEOPARDY! sensation Sam Buttrey may not have won May's Masters special, but he's won fans' hearts with his signature catchphrase.
The 62-year-old explained the origin behind his saying, "Bring It!" on the podcast Inside Jeopardy.
Sam joined the weekly Jeopardy! podcast on July 10 with longtime producer Sarah Whitcomb Foss and former champion Buzzy Cohen.
The associate professor of operations research at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, was one of the six elite players picked for Masters.
Hosted by Ken Jennings, 49, gambler pro James Holzhauer won the glitzy $500,000 special in the spring.
Steve Martin lookalike Sam didn't notch a single win but was undoubtedly one of the more popular returning champions in the mix.
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His signature move of exclaiming "Bring it!" to select the last clue on the game board has become so popular that contestants have continued using it ever since as a nod to him.
Two-day winner Ittai Sopher exclaimed "Bring it!" as recently as July 14's episode.
'IT BECAME CLEAR PEOPLE LIKED IT'
Sam shared: “I’ve always been struck by this weird thing where there’s one clue left [on the board].
"Nobody knows what to do."
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“Do you wait and have Ken or Mayim say, ‘and now the final clue?’"
"Or do you get out ahead of them and say, ‘I’ll also take the $200 clue?’”
“There’s never been a policy for that, so I thought I’d get ahead of it.
"And I don’t know that ‘Bring It’ was the particular phrase that I had planned.
“But there it was, and I had the call for it, and it became clear that people liked it; my fellow competitors have used it."
Producer Foss complimented Sam since “Bring It” comes up every few weeks on the regular show and is now game show canon.
SAM'S CLUB
Sam took home $100,000 after winning the 2021 Professor's Tournament.
He won an additional $50,000 placing third in the 2022 Tournament of Champions, though there was a hotly contested biblical Final Jeopardy that tournament fans accused "robbed" Sam of a win.
Counting his additional $50,000 from Masters, that brings his grand total to $200,000 from tournaments alone.
Sam also got a wild nod of approval from host Ken when the Masters special aired.
Writer Louis Peitzman tweeted: "‘That’s father.’ – me, any time Sam Buttrey is onscreen.”
Ken, 49, seemed to agree that Sam is indeed “father,” throwing a like at the tweet.
Sam even has a Soundcloud rap career on the side, which doesn't hurt the likability factor.
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Sam also went viral after the tournament aired for an eerie story he told on stage about turning down an invite to a Titanic wreckage tour.
The U.S. Sun reported he was very likely referring to one of the two previous successful missions on the since-fatal submersible Titan.
