This couldn’t have been scripted any better: Jeopardy! contestants struggle to answer rudimentary trivia about football, ironic hilarity and passive-aggressive bullying from Alex Trebek ensues
Seriously, this couldn’t possibly have occurred better even if it were scripted by Seth Rogen or Sarah Silverman. The desperate avoidance of the category, from all three contestants until it was absolutely the last thing left on the board, and then the defeated resignation from all three that their scores were condemned to be final where they were, seeing as how none of them thought they had a cake’s chance at a buffet of getting any of them right.
And then to make matters worse, not only was the studio audience beginning to laugh track at their pathetic lack of knowledge of the country’s most rabidly popular professional spectator sport, they began to start getting lip from the biggest dweeb of them all, Alex Trebek. Who completely abused the fact that he had the answers right in front of him and could easily pretend like these were basic, easy questions, regardless of if he knew the answers to them or not.
Seriously, it never fails to astound me that Jeopardy! contestants can rapidly nail the correct questions to shit like “Philippe Cozette and Graham Fagg had a handshake in this location” or “Alfred Dreyfus was among the thousands who marched through the streets of Paris during this 1902 funeral procession,” but they don’t know what a fair catch is?
I mean, it’s almost un-American to not know a little something about football. It’s practically impossible to go out to eat or just go anywhere in public nowadays without televisions somewhere blasting highlights from a football game that happened somewhere in the United States. I’d think through osmosis or the same manner in which these nerds can absorb even the most mundane of factoids, they’d be able to pick up shit like hearing the phrase “option” whenever the 50 times a game it happens in the college ranks.
But that’s clearly giving them too much credit.
Look, there’s no denying that we’re obviously in the age where the nerds have taken over the planet. Those with jock-like tendencies are definitely in the minority these days, and sure in a perfect world there would be more balance, but the scales have undoubtedly shifted to where knowledge can actually be power, and those who brainlessly excel at physical repetition isn’t nearly as highly touted as it once was. Needless to say, it’s great to see of all places, Jeopardy! being the arena in which the nerds were knocked back down a peg and their shortcomings magnified by their sheer ineptitude to answer basic knowledge about a popular sport.
The best part about it is that Jeopardy! isn’t stupid; after this entertaining debacle, there’s no doubt at all that this is going to emerge again in the future, but it’s just a matter of when. Perhaps every late-January, when the Super Bowl approaches, they’ll bust out the football questions again, and maybe the contestants then will hopefully be a little more prepared. Otherwise, it’s going to be lols all over again when they don’t even know what a touchdown is, or how many yards comprises of a field.
This really was the best thing ever on this day.
