To become a Jeopardy! contestant, a person has to show off their intellect in a number of different fields, from science to geography to pop culture and beyond. But when it comes to the subject of football, America's most popular sport, the trio competing in the February 1 Jeopardy! telecast shared a complete lack of knowledge. In the clip below, you'll see all three of them going 0-for-5 in a football category, which hilariously made Alex Trebek a tad more sarcastic than normal. Check it out!
I get a kick out of watching Jeopardy! contestants occasionally offer up answers so stupid that their presence on the stage is put into question. It's not a show meant to inspire such large spans of silence from those competing, however, and this normally might have been an extremely boring way to end the Jeopardy round. But here, Alex Trebek was on his A-game when it came to getting cordially salty with the three clueless people in front of him: Ryan Fenster, Sara Helmers and Justin Earnshaw.
From the get-go, Trebek poked fun at how none of them made a move to respond to the $200 clue, which set the mood for the next four. The audience was already chuckling during the pre-buzzer silence, and after giving the answer, Alex joked about needing to already go to a commercial break. Somebody should have been ready to do a rimshot just then. Where ya at, Johnny Gilbert?
After that, Alex Trebek even had time to throw a little pantomime into his answer-reveals. This is his version of the fair catch, which looks a bit like what I assume his flamenco dancing looks like.
The best part, though, came after the $1,000 clue. There was something so bizarrely perfect about the way Trebek said, "I...will...die." Of course, no one actually answered that Minnesota Vikings question, so the host needn't have worried. Just imagine if one of those had been the Daily Double.
In the end, the returning champ Ryan Fenster went on to win it again, without any further categories going completely unchecked. So it wasn't the worst game ever, and people did actually win. But boy, if we could just get Hyper-Snarky Alex Trebek all the time...
Jeopardy! airs in syndication daily, so check your local listings to see all the weird hours that it's playing in your area. And in the meantime, there's no reason to question bookmarking our midseason premiere schedule, as it'll help you find when all your favorite shows are coming back in the next few months.
