‘Jeopardy!’ Host Ken Jennings Reveals He’s ‘Not Very Good’ at This Trivia Subject

Jeopardy! Logo Navy Zip Hoodie

$29.98

Buy Now

While Ken Jennings might be the greatest Jeopardy! champion of all-time, there is one trivia subject that he is not good at. While the host is a major sports fan, he doesn’t think he could excel at sports trivia.

The game show host talked with GQ about his favorite football team — the Seattle Seahawks — who are playing the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl on February 8. This is the team’s fourth Super Bowl appearance in 20 years, and long-time fans like Jennings are excited.

He was born in Seattle, Washington, in 1974, two years before the Seahawks formed. The host moved to Asia with his family in the first grade and still watched the games from afar on Armed Forces Television in South Korea. “I  just looked at the schedule to try to figure out when the Seahawks might be on Monday Night Football, or whichever game the Pentagon decided to show us. They were always at weird times. I think that if the games were live, they would’ve been at 3 a.m. Everything was tape delayed, but you couldn’t look up the score. So for 17 hours, we were in the dark,” he said.

Even though Jennings has followed the team his whole life and read numerous almanacs, football magazines, and season yearbooks, he couldn’t answer trivia questions about them or any other sports team. “You are obviously someone with a lot of information rattling around the old noggin. Does that include football stuff? Can you hold your own in NFL or Seahawks trivia?” GQ asked.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Ken Jennings (@whoiskenjennings)

“I really am not very good because I like a good narrative with my trivia,” Jennings responded. “Sports have a narrative, but often sports as trivia is numbers. The dates and the numbers are the part of trivia that’s often just a C for me. If it’s Dock Ellis throwing a no-hitter on LSD, there’s your story. But that’s why sports trivia is not really in my wheelhouse as much as it should be, I got to say.”

“The thing I just saw, which I’m sure you’ve seen, is that every time there’s a new Pope, the Seahawks go to the Super Bowl. That’s very good,” he ended.

Related

Ken Jennings Reveals 'Jeopardy!' Makeover Secrets Including His Alex Trebek Tribute

However, Jennings should brush up on his sports trivia because executive producers Sarah Whitcomb-Foss and Michael Davies teased in the most recent Inside Jeopardy! Podcast episode that a Sports Jeopardy! spinoff may be coming in the near future.

“Close observers of my body of work will know that I am a massive sports fan and bringing a sports version of Jeopardy! to the air, to streaming is probably my biggest New Year’s hope,” Davies said in the episode.

While Colin Jost hosts Pop Culture Jeopardy!, Ken Jennings hosts every other version of the show. It is not clear if he would host the sports version, but he probably wouldn’t win it.