Houseguests on Big Brother love talking about competition wins. Everyone knows Janelle Pierzina is the Comp Queen and this season Shane Meaney has dominated the game.
This week Shane won his third straight Power of Veto, meaning he’s basically won five of the first six competitions (he was a member of the winning team for the first HoH, though Britney gave it to Willie).
But does it matter? Statistically speaking, no. You might think it looks good on your resume to have so many wins, but in the history of Big Brother, no player who has won three or more Power of Veto competitions has ever won the game.
You read that right. If you win at least three PoVs, you won’t win the game. In fact, you won’t even go that far. Of the nine HGs who have earned at least three Veto wins in a single season, only two managed to make it to the finale (season 8’s Daniele Donato and season 10’s Memphis).
Since season 6, every year has had at least one HG to score three or more PoV wins, a Veto King or Queen, but they inevitably fail to win the game. James Rhine picked up four wins in season 6 and still only finished in seventh place. Janelle won five during the All-Stars season but was evicted in third place.
More recently, season 11’s Michele Noonan and season 12’s Britney Haynes turned three PoV wins into fourth place finishes. And Brendon Villegas won three PoV competitions in season 12 AND season 13, but still never finished better than sixth place.
The most interesting case given Shane’s current situation might be season 9’s Crazy James Zinkand, who is the only other person to win three PoV competitions in a row. And he was evicted in sixth place, which came as soon as he stopped winning the Veto.
The moral of the story is that winning the Power of Veto competition isn’t the best way to win the game, it’s the best way to make you a huge target everyone tries to get out of the house.
(Side Note: Another interesting statistical fact is that, in the past five seasons, 70 percent of all Veto winners have been men. Clearly, there’s a gender bias at work as well. There’s typically a gender gap in the HoH competitions as well, but those numbers were changed dramatically last year as women won 10 of the 12 HoHs in season 13.)
On the other hand, winning multiple HoHs is a sure-fire way to win the game. Throughout the history of Big Brother, there have been 10 players who won three or more HoH competitions in a single season. And six of them were winners (Drew Daniel, Mike “Boogie” Malin, Evel Dick Donato, Dan Gheesling, Hayden Moss, and Rachel Reilly). And the remaining four did pretty well too, with Ryan Quicksall finishing in second during season 9, Janelle finishing third during All-Stars, and season 2’s Hardy Ames-Hill and season 5’s Jennifer “Nakomis” Dedmon each winding up in fourth.
The numbers don’t lie. If you want to win the game, you need to win at least three HoH competitions. And if you want to get evicted before the finale, win a whole bunch of PoV competitions. Sorry Shane, but unless you can win the Power of Veto every single week, you may be in trouble.
(Image courtesy of CBS)
Senior Writer, BuddyTV
John watches nearly every show on TV, but he specializes in sci-fi/fantasy like The Vampire Diaries, Supernatural and True Blood. However, he can also be found writing about everything from Survivor and Glee to One Tree Hill and Smallville.
