I would guess that 98 percent of the time in Final Jeopardy!, you'll find that the contestants are writing down what they believe is the correct answer, to the absolutely best of their ability. After all, it's the one incident that can reverse the course of a whole game if you're behind and willing to risk it all, or, alternatively, it can help you to add tens of thousands of dollars to your total as you continue to build your winning fortune.
But in that other two percent of contestants, the game might be a complete runaway (for themselves or for one of their opponents), or it's possible that the contestant simply can't muster up an educated guess that has a reasonable chance of being accurate. In those cases, Final Jeopardy! gives contestants the freedom to write whatever you please. It could be a comical answer. It could be an inside joke or personal reference that only their family or friends back home could understand. Or, in one instance, a Final Jeopardy! response can double as an attempt to make some viral sports headlines.
That was the case in the debut episode of Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers, who is one in a line of several guest hosts that have helped to run the show following the death of Alex Trebek. Rodgers, a former "Celebrity Jeopardy!" winner, has been given it his all to prepare for his two-week stint as the host, telling ESPN's Rob Demovsky that he had been reviewing "film" of past episodes, taking "pages and pages and pages of notes," and really trying to study how Alex Trebek operated.
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He couldn't have prepared for this Final Jeopardy! answer, however, which was revealed before the show was set to officially air at 7:00 p.m. ET.
Rodgers teased that the Final Jeopardy! answer would surprise us, predicting that what occurred would become a "viral moment."
"Just wait until you see the first show and what the returning champion wrote, and then think about me standing at the podium watching -- and this will make sense when you see what he wrote -- and I'm watching him write this down," Rodgers told Demovsky. "For about 25 seconds, I'm watching him write this, and he thinks about the answer and says 'F--- it,' basically, 'I'm going to write this answer,' which, probably one of the viral moments of my two weeks will be his response, which is taking a shot at something that happened to us late in the season."
Of course, the moment in question is when head coach Matt LaFleur decided to kick a field goal with just over two minutes left in the NFC Championship game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. At the time, the Packers were trailing by eight points, which means that LaFleur could have given the ball to his future Hall of Fame quarterback in an attempt to tie the game. Instead, they went in another direction, and the Buccaneers ultimately advanced to the Super Bowl.
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For Rodgers to stay so composed and laugh off the moment in his debut episode is promising for the rest of his run, even if he had seen the contestant writing down that mischievous answer. It's just his luck that this happened — I wouldn't think too many "Jeopardy!" contestants even know of that moment, given the dozens of hilarious sports bloopers to come from the show — and kudos to him for dealing with it well.
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