This Is the One 'Jeopardy!' Category Contestants Incorrectly Guess the Most

There are very few times that Joe Average can sit back and scoff at Jeopardy! contestants for their lack of know-how on a subject. “Body Parts in Latin”? Um, no. “The 5th Century”? Negatory. “Contemporary American Authors”? Unless it’s Dr. Seuss, then probably not. “Sports”? Now we’re talking!

Baseball, football, hockey, you name it, and it’s a veritable guarantee that Jeopardy! contestants have avoided the category outright if they can or given an answer so very wrong that they should be benched (definition withdraw (a sports player) from play). Even host Ken Jennings couldn’t resist joking about one woman’s guess of the “50-yard dash” for “Sifan Hassan holds the women’s world record in this track event: 4 minutes, 12.33 seconds.” To put it into perspective, contestant’s answers to sports categories in Jeopardy! are about as bad as the 1976 Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

One particularly bad round in 2018 had host Alex Trebek offering to cut to commercial rather than carrying on the debacle of a “Talkin’ Football” category. The three contestants that day – an English teacher, an attorney, and a banker – tore through everything else on the board, avoiding the category like the plague, but eventually, they had to tackle it. Now it’s not like they gave bad answers, more like they never gave an answer at all, what they call a “triple stumper,’ where all three contestants pass on all five clues. It prompted Trebek, a big sports fan himself, to posit, “I can tell you guys are big football fans,” to the amusement of the studio audience. Then he really had the audience in stitches by suggesting they should go to a commercial break before suggesting they look at the final question on the board “just for the fun of it.”

‘Jeopardy!’ Fans Demand Change As Backlash Over Controversial Category Grows

Nobody likes a rhymer.

Jennings referenced the infamous episode in 2022, when a once-in-a-lifetime moment saw contestants go 5-for-5 on an “NFL Opening Weekend,” sending the contestants and live crowd into hysterics with, “You guys did very well on football and will not go viral on YouTube!” Of course, even if the sports category has nothing to do with football, contestants fare no better. One spectacularly bad answer managed to make the eyes roll of basketball and hockey fans alike, with a contestant in 2014, with a clue asking who had 11 100-plus assist seasons in the NHL, guessed NBA legend Magic Johnson (he does know a thing or two about assists), prompting The Washington Post to headline the story as “Magic Johnson. What is worst Jeopardy answer ever?”

There’s a Reason Why Sports Categories are Hard for ‘Jeopardy!’ Contestants

While it’s easy to have a laugh at contestants who botch sports categories on Jeopardy!, there has to be a reason why it’s traditionally so troublesome, right? Truth is, like any question that stumps contestants, there’s no one single reason, with bad luck, brain freeze, or even strategy. But Sabreena Merchant, a full-time sportswriter in Los Angeles, makes a solid explanation for what she believes is the most probable reason why sports categories are so problematic. Merchant, who appeared on Jeopardy! herself in 2020, says (per Toronto Star), “If you don’t follow sports, there’s a huge gap. If you’re at school, you’ll pick up on Shakespeare. But it’s not like you’re going to learn about LeBron James in school.”

But in the same sentence, Merchant also adds, “Most of the (sports) questions are fairly surface level,” which points to a flaw in her logic. No, you don’t learn about basketball greats in school, but you also don’t learn about world foods, automakers, Latin, or movie songs either. If you’re going on Jeopardy!, why wouldn’t sports be just as important to brush up on, even at a broad level, than anything else?

I leave you with this: in a recent Jeopardy! episode, the Final Jeopardy hint read: “It’s the only team to play in the Super Bowl before Neil Armstrong’s Moon Walk that has not been back to the big game since.” As you’d expect, not one contestant gave the correct answer, which Jennings revealed, saying, “But the winners of Super Bowl III, the Jets, are having a pretty rough 55-year streak, I think.” Even on Jeopardy! the abysmal New York Jets can’t win.

Jeopardy! is available to stream in the U.S. on YouTube TV.