Big Brother 11: Why Jordan Won

Well, I certainly didn’t see this coming a few weeks ago. I mean, really? Jordan winning? But once this final three was set, I knew it would be Kevin or Jordan. At least Kevin actually played the game. Jordan? Not so much. But she did make a few good moves and claimed that she played more than we thought. So rather than simply saying Jordan got the big check because her name wasn’t “Natalie,” we still need to answer the question: Why did Jordan win?

Throughout the season, we’ve answered a different question for each houseguest, looking at why they lost. But other than turning around the question, we still address Jordan the same as we did for all the others – by looking back at What Big Brother 11 Houseguests Should Have Learned to see how she ended up half a million dollars richer.

I always note in the first rule “that the best schemer does not always win. While this is the most important rule, it is not the only one – and challenges and twists always have the possibility of messing things up.” There is perhaps no Big Brother winner who illustrated this point better than Jordan. Indeed, when I interviewed her, she talked a bit about her strategy, and it was the exact opposite of what I recommend when it comes to plotting and scheming. As she told me, “My way of playing the game was to not lie and to be nice.”

She went on to say a couple other things that I want to address:

I actually won the money so I proved that my strategy must have been not that bad if I won! You don’t have to win the most competitions, be the strongest or the smartest – it’s a lot of things, how you connect with people, how you control yourself. A lot is just being nice – that wasn’t fake, that was for real. My thing is make people feel the way you want to be treated. Even when people were rude to me, I still treated them with respect.

This is an example of the logical fallacy referred to as "Post hoc, ergo propter hoc,” Latin for, "After this, therefore because of this." As noted on The Nizkor Project website, discussing all manners of logical fallacies, “This fallacy is committed when it is concluded that one event causes another simply because the proposed cause occurred before the proposed effect.” In other words, simply because Jordan acted in a certain way doesn’t mean that caused her to win. The fact that she failed to scheme and plot doesn’t mean that’s the way to go, and we know that because we’ve seen countless more examples proving it over the years.

None of this is meant as a slam against Jordan, but just to point out the logic behind the situation and the overall need for players to continue to use strategy in future seasons, despite Jordan’s win. But we’ll worry about that more next season – for now, we’ll just concentrate on Jordan.

I should note that Jordan did make a few good game moves. For example, after winning final HOH, she booted Kevin despite the fact that she probably liked him personally more and had sworn to him that she would take him to the final two. Prior to that, she told me that she played up her naiveté and lack of overall intelligence, building on what the other players already thought of her. Presuming she’s telling the truth about that (and I’ve come to believe she is), it does go to show that she wasn’t as stupid as her housemates thought she was.

Considering all we’ve said here, it’s pretty obvious that Jordan didn’t scheme and plot too much or backstab too soon, as the second rule discusses. She did allow her alliances to be too obvious, but just about everybody did this season, I’m afraid. And it ended up being to the detriment of those with whom she was aligned rather than Jordan herself, because Jordan was determined to be the lesser threat.

Jordan certainly succeeded in the third rule – more than anywhere else. It says to pretend to be nice, but really, Jordan was not pretending. As she told me, “A lot is just being nice – that wasn’t fake, that was for real. My thing is make people feel the way you want to be treated. Even when people were rude to me, I still treated them with respect.”

This worked for Jordan in two key ways. First, by being nice, she ensured she was not targeted due to personal reasons. Second is a point I’ve mentioned a couple times now – though some people may complain about America’s Choice interfering with the game, it’s been going on long enough that it is a part of the game and players need to understand that. Jordan, as we heard via the live audience’s cheering for her on several occasions, was well-liked by America. Natalie was not. So right off the bat, Jordan got America’s vote from the jury and received an immediate advantage. If there had been America’s Player type situations, we can pretty well guess that they would have also gone Jordan’s way as opposed to some others in the house (once Jeff was gone, of course).