Was the Red Team One of the Worst in Challenge History?

The Challenge has seen its share of team season, and the Challenge USA 2 just converted from a 3-team format to an individual game.

Now that the squads are disbanded, we’re left with a seriously underwhelming performance from the Red Team. Initially, this group showed a lot of promise on paper. It had two multi-season Champs (Bananas and Jonna), a Challenge finalist (Paulie), and a rising Challenge star (Michele). Somehow, it all went wrong, and the group only won one daily Challenge.

Perhaps the issues started at the team’s inception. Josh was the one who picked the group, though I can’t really say he did a bad job. Granted, his role as team captain does have one flaw: It meant Josh had to be part of the team.

During Storm the Castle (the first Challenge), it felt like the Red Team was close to winning. Then, it only went downhill. Teammates continuously found themselves targeted at the Hopper, and this meant some people went home. It also meant Arena winners could defect to another team, and Bananas shook the game up by jumping to the Blue Team and adding Cory to Red.

The Red Team does have one win under its belt, but it was a victory at Sideswiped that was handed to them by the Blue Team. Beyond that, it was continuous losses.

Here’s the odd thing about the Red Team: They mostly got along at the start. Michele even returned to the group when she won the first elimination. But, the team was also dominated by the Secret Garden alliance, and this caused tension. Eventually, it would divide the team into Survivor vs. non-Survivor players.

By the time we saw an individual game, the Red Team had the fewest people remaining (four). Vacancies were created when Jonna, Paulie, Dusty, and Tiffany were eliminated. By comparison, the Blue Team had seven people and the Green Team had five.

Does this make the Red Team the worst of all time? I don’t think so, but it does rank it among the five worst teams. Granted, it’s hard to fully assess this team, because USA 2’s format allowed players to defect and be replaced.

In my opinion, here are the five worst Challenge teams of all time:

5. The Women (Battle of the Sexes 2): They won 3 out of 16 challenges, and one of them was a result of the Men throwing the Vertigo mission.

4. The Red Team (Challenge USA 2): They won 1 out of 7 challenges, and it was basically handed to them, though they did earnestly outperform the Blue Team during Sideswiped.

3. The Challengers (The Ruins): They won 1 out of 10 challenges. Then, to make things worse, they didn’t send Casey into The Ruins when they had the chance.

2. The Blue Team (Battle of the Bloodline): They lost every challenge when they were together. Granted, most of them were throwing these challenges because of Bloodlines’ format.

1. The Stars (Champs vs. Stars 1): They lost every single challenge that season. Most of them didn’t want to be there.