Putting your disdain for sports aside - the set of people who watch football is much larger than the set of people who watch Jeopardy. So wouldn’t make sense for the Jeopardy producers to try to increase the size of that intersection?
No offense, but if your exposure to people who are both football and Jeopardy fans is admittedly extremely limited, then maybe that old adage that “the plural of ‘anecdote’ is not ‘data’” is applicable. At least 33% of the contestants ON Jeopardy last night were familiar enough with Rodgers, the Packers and/or the NFL to make a very specific reference to the NFC Championship Game, and none of them knew what a sackbut was. If the people competing on Jeopardy don’t know what it is, I’m not going to fault the temporary host for not knowing. As you say - Trebek claims he only knew 80% of the answers, and it was the final answer in the column (i.e. the final 20% of it).
Hey, I watch football. And Jeopardy. And I know what a sackbut is–it was the first thing that came to mind once the answer was revealed.
Anyway, I agree with whoever said that Rodgers was a lot better than Dr. Oz, but not quite as good as Producer Guy. But it’s only his first game. He might improve as he hosts more games.
Go Bears, My Ass! Fight On!
He did much better than I would have thought.
Was it a coincidence that the first Aaron Rodgers-hosted show had “Mr. Rogers” as the answer to Final Jeopardy?
I have never heard of sackbut and I don’t feel bad about it. I don’t listen to Renaissance music and haven’t read Daniel in years.
Yeah, I was a shy nerd who got pantsed by the jocks on the playground in elementary school too, and on that basis I divided the world into the shy, smart, nerdy kids, like me, who were the Good Guys (who watched shows like Jeopardy) and dumb, macho, prole jocks who were the Bad Guys (and watched stuff like football,) and to this day I couldn’t care less about sportsball. But when I got out in the wider world, I saw that there are a lot of people who do not fall into the dumb macho prole jock archetype yet do watch football.
For the record, I actually own TWO CDs of sackbut music. I really don’t care for them, or any other pre-Baroque music.
Nor do I like football.
[shyly raises hand]
Klutzy science nerd here. I don’t love (or completely understand) football… but I’ve discovered that I do love hanging out in a local tavern with friends who love (and completely understand) and passionately care about it. It’s a blast.
Especially when the players are having fun, and watching the Packers in a Wisconsin bar, when “A-a-ron” has a shit-eatin’ smile on, is a blast. So I hope he doesn’t do too well as a host (I figure if he pratfalls on his sackbut, he doesn’t quit his day job).
and:
That’s where I am on this. The last thing we need on Jeopardy! is an attitude of sneering at ‘knowing stuff.’ Jeopardy! is one of the few venues in our culture in which ‘knowing stuff’ is valued.
As for the posts stating that the word “sackbut” is incorrectly used in the King James version of the Old Testament: if my point had been a claim that ‘sackbut is correctly used in the KJV,’ then these posts would be great correctives.
But as it happens—and as is clear from the context—I was not claiming that the translators who made the KJV correctly used the word sackbut.
Instead, my claim was that the word is used there, and that the verses (four, according to my count–all of which are making lists of instruments) have been quoted widely enough that ‘sackbut’ should not be considered to be a word known only to a handful of specialists.
It’s true that the King James Bible was the most widely read book in the English-speaking world for hundreds of years, and the story of Nebuchadnezzar and Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego was pretty widely known as Bible stories go. However, my sense is that most denominations had abandoned the KJV by the 1970s. And even if you’re old enough to have heard that passage in the “sackbut” version, you wouldn’t necessarily know what it was; if you were a kid in the 1960s listening to that passage being read aloud in church, it would seem like just another archaic word.
I did not get that at all from his comment and I think you are projecting. There was nothing “sneering” in what he said. No one had a negative attitude about “knowing stuff.” It was simply a comment on an obscure piece of trivia that was new to all of them. As I already said, I have heard that exact same comment before on Jeopardy, when there was an answer that none of the contestants, or Alex, had heard of. I think Ken Jennings may have said that at one point as well.
Although Mrs. C and I are long time football freaks, we had no idea what to expect from Aaron Rodgers. After two episodes we think he’s the best “Guest Host” since Ken.
This is ridiculous. The guy has won Celebrity Jeopardy, and has stated in multiple interviews that he’s a huge fan of Jeopardy and of Alex. The thought that he was “sneering” at “knowing stuff” is ludicrous.
He made a “Turd Ferguson” reference last night - was he sneering at Burt Reynolds?
That’s also really just aaron being aaron. As any packers fan will tell you he’s kind of smarmy asshole. Also, as any fan of the team will tell you, he’s a obsessed with details, revels in trivia and knowing everything about everything and has a damn near photographic memory. He loves this kind of stuff
That seems like a plausible explanation to me.
Those leaping to his defense are welcome to do so; neither I nor others who’ve posted about this have claimed that Rodgers’ comment was the Crime of the Century.
General point: some people have the attitude that ‘knowing stuff is cool,’ while other people are more inclined to bonding with others via comments about how obscure something is or how weird it would be to expect others to know something or eye-rolling about Eggheads and the like. (For Rodgers’ fans: no, I’m not claiming that those were the words he used! I make no claim about him or his personal mental state whatsoever.)
It’s a basic difference in approach to knowledge.
If you love Rodgers and hope he’s made the permanent host: great! But you may have to learn to live with the knowledge that not everyone sees him as the ideal.
And you have to learn to live with the knowledge that being athletic or enjoying sports doesn’t make you an anti intellectual.
You’re the one trying to be some weird Jeopardy gatekeeper.
LOL, yeah, one of the lessons I learned when I got out in the wider world is that there are people who are both smarter than I and better at sports.
Apparently, some people never grew up, and still think the entire world is divided into the Good Guys, geeks who love knowledge and progress and have “In this house, we believe: science is real…” etc., etc. signs in their front yard, and the Bad Guys, jocks who are anti-intellectual progress-thwarting Science Deniers™ and probably voted for Trump to boot! And saying with a smirk that you’ve never heard of something three Jeopardy contestants had never heard of either puts you in the latter category.
IMHO, Rodgers is not a great host. Not terrible, but too low key, not enough of a personality, and not good at all with the interview portion of the show. Of the guest hosts so far, I put him at the bottom of the list above only Oz. (I only watched two of Oz’s shows out of morbid curiosity. I was traveling for the rest of them.)
Even though I originally complained about Ken Jenning’s voice not being smooth enough, I currently put him at the top of the list because he ran the game every bit as well as Alex, and was better in the interviews than Trebek had been.
Richards was perfectly adequate as host, but boring.
Couric was her usual perky, chipper self, which I found grating and wouldn’t care to watch every day. I rank her about even with Rodgers.
I’d rate everyone else in the universe above Oz, except Donald Trump.
What are you rankings of the guest hosts we’ve seen so far?