Trebek Mercilessly Roasts Jeopardy Contestants for Bombing Entire Football Category

By Josiah Upper February 3, 2018 at 3:09pm

Alex Trebek has kept viewers entertained with “Jeopardy!” for years, largely thanks to his crisp, dry humor that leaves the audience’s focus on the game but keeps them engaged with both host and audience.

But sometimes even he can’t control himself.

“Jeopardy!” contestants often leave viewers amazed with their breadth and depth of knowledge, but as you can imagine, if they forget to study a specific subject before appearing on the show there’s an enormous gap in their knowledge.

I mean, who studies football for “Jeopardy!”, anyway?

One of the contestants made the unfortunate choice to start the “Talkin’ Football” category — but only before literally everything else had been taken off the list.

The first question, to be fair, probably would have given a couple of football fans pause.

“Your choice: do or don’t name this play in which the QB runs the ball & can choose to pitch it to another back,” was the question posed.

That’s called an “option play,” but even some casual football watchers might not know that.

Would you have fared better in the category?

No one got it right… or even guessed at all. Trebek clued them in to the correct answer, and then moved on, commenting “I can see you guys are big football fans,” which drew a laugh.

That was amusing, but what happened next was even better. The next question asked, “Tom Landry perfected the shotgun formation with this team.”

The correct answer? The Dallas Cowboys. The actual answer? Total, embarrassed silence for the second time in a row.

“Uh, you think we should go to commercial?” asked Trebek, who was simultaneously stunned and amused.

The embarrassment continued for the entirety of the category. Not a single person even guessed an answer for the entire run.

It got to the point that at the end of the embarrassing series, the $1,000 clue, Trebek said “If you guys ring in and get this one, I will die.”

You can watch the entirety of the series of unfortunate silence below from “Jeopardy!”‘s YouTube channel: it’s television gold.

I mean, just look at Trebek’s face.

It may seem like an utter halt to the entertainment the show is supposed to provide, but flubs like these are part of what keeps audiences tuned in to “Jeopardy!” after so many years.

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