'Jeopardy!' Contestants Prove Once Again the Only Category They Cannot Master is Easy Sports Questions

Jerry Thornton6/05/2024 3:20 PM

Amanda Edwards. Getty Images.

When it comes to most television, we tune in because it gives us a chance to feel superior to the imbeciles who somehow made it through the casting process. Whether you're convinced you know more about the price of a washer/dryer than they do, guess a word puzzle before them, or socially navigate your way through a Tribal Council vote better than those poor, bug-bitten wretches who've been sleeping on a beach for three weeks.

But not all TV has that appeal. Some things we watch just to weirdly feel worse about ourselves. I mean, no one sits in front of American Ninja Warrior and thinks, "I could climb that Salmon Ladder better than this 110 pound Parkour champion." Or tunes into a Great British Baking Show Showstopper Challenge thinking, "You call those profiteroles? I'll bake circles around this bitch's Gâteau Saint Honoré." There's just something about watching people do things you never could that's oddly compelling.

But for truly steering into the skid of your own inadequacies, there's nothing like Jeopardy!. On a nightly basis, it reminds the average human that you live in a world filled with knowledge. All of it easily accessible to you. And your weak, flaccid brain has retained none of it.

Though not always. There are those categories that stump the brilliant polymaths who make it to the Alex Trebek Stage every night and make the rest of us look the brainiacs for once. And no topic flips that pyramid upside down like Sports.

No matter how simple it is. In fact, the more obvious the answer, the quicker you get it, the harder it is for these intellectuals. Last night, it wasn't merely Sports, it was 21st Century Sports. Meaning you didn't have to know about Warren Spahn or the 1936 Berlin Olympics or Sugar Ray Leonard or whatever. You just had to have some fundamental knowledge of what is essentially current events. And yet it was like Ken Jennings was giving them the clues in Ancient Sanskrit:

Let me rephrase that. Because these three probably would get the clues delivered in Sanskrit. What's impossible is for them to get clues delivered in the language of Pardon My Take. To a person they could run a category of The Renaissance, Nobel Prizes, or World Geography. But the Phillies winning the 2008 World Series, the transfer portal or Russell Westbrook are all areas of obscure, arcane knowledge. Your average frat boy or sports pub barfly would look like the guy from Stump the Schwab (RIP) by comparison. And in for one of those rare Jeopardy!, makes us all feel like we're not all slack-jawed imbeciles, for just a few fleeting seconds.

So all of you feeling good about yourself after banging out these answers, please join me in shaming and humiliating our intellectual superiors.