Being on Jeopardy! demands an incredible breadth of knowledge in countless areas, including NFL history. That proved to be a real puzzler to the three contestants on the show Monday, who all struggled to answer questions that might qualify as easy to any hardcore football fan.
Some diehard football fans on Jeopardy! tonight pic.twitter.com/xY9PGickz2
— Sports Illustrated (@SInow) September 25, 2017
So the first thing you’ll notice here is that all the contestants left the “NFL Teams By Hall of Famers” category for last, which is never a strong show of confidence. Once they began trying to answer the questions, it became apparent why that was the case.
Nobody tries to answer who “Mean” Joe Greene played for, even though the lineman is synonymous with Pittsburgh Steelers football. Haven’t any of them seen that Coke commercial with the jersey?!?
Contestent Anupama steps to the plate for the next player, Marcus Allen, but awkwardly answers with “Colorado Rockies,” which is wrong for a lot of different reasons:
(a) The Colorado Rockies are an MLB team, not an NFL team
(b) There is no NFL team named “Colorado” or “Rockies”
(c) Marcus Allen never played for a team in Colorado
The answer was Los Angeles Raiders, which, hey, at least “Raiders” kind of sounds like “Rockies.”
You have to be ridiculously smart to be on Jeopardy!, and the contestants spent the rest of the episode correctly answering questions about wordplay, world history, physiology, mythology, and British poetry.
Just don’t ask them about NFL teams.