‘Big Brother 15’ finale reaction: Comparing Andy Herren to Ian Terry, Rachel Reilly, other winners

Now that we have slept on last night’s “Big Brother 15” finale, we are a little bit better prepared now to tackle a question that is fun to do every year: Trying to compare the most-recent winner to some of the others. We’re not necessarily talking about in terms of whether or not they are likable, but whether they played the most dominant game and ruled the house from start to finish.

For us, there is a small core of people that we really put at the top of the list when it comes to winners who dominated the strategic game from their season: Dr. Will Kirby (season 2), Dan Gheesling (season 10), and Maggie Ausburn (season 6). Clearly Maggie is the least-likable of the three, but if you go back and watch her season, then you’ll see that she really established a crazy mentality among the other houseguests that kept her safe.

Once you get past that list, we would put Andy as a game-player right behind such people as Jun Song (season 4) and Hayden Moss (season 12). He did a great job all season long of keeping himself safe, and his game itself was so brilliant (in only getting nominated once) that under most circumstances, we would rank him even higher. The only reason he is out of our top five is simply that we don’t really think his level of competition was that high, since GinaMarie was barely a player, McCrae was asleep most of the time, Spencer’s strategy was to just be a pawn, and Amanda is the only one that was proactive with most of the early moves. He orchestrated things behind the scenes, but if surrounded by better players, he would have been found out.

We would say that Andy is a slightly better winner than Ian Terry last year, Evel Dick in season 8, and Mike Boogie in All-Stars, mostly because they each benefited from moves made by other people or did not always know what was happening. (Evel Dick is taken down a notch from where he would otherwise be thanks to Eric Stein being forced to save him by America.) Meanwhile, he’s far ahead in our mind of people like Lisa Donahue, Jordan Lloyd, and Rachel Reilly, who were helped along generously by such things as twists, America voting, and a jury not getting sequestered.

Now if we’re talking likable winners, Andy’s far lower than almost every single name that we mention here. He’s got an edge over a certain “Baller” from season 9, but that’s easy to do since the guy’s in jail. We can’t judge season 1’s Eddie McGee based on strategy because it was a different game, but we love him about a million times more than a guy who was often irritating to watch on the live feeds because he would not let anyone talk without him being there.

Where do you think Andy stacks up with past winners? We have a ton of highlights over at this link from the backyard interviews last night, so be sure to check them out.

Photo: CBS