Aaron Rodgers is approaching his guest-hosting duties for “Jeopardy!” no different than a football game.
The Green Bay Packers quarterback, whose begins his two-week run as guest-host for the game show, recently told ESPN that he has been watching game tape of old episodes with Alex Trebek to prepare himself for the moment.
“I wrote down all the different ways he would take it to break,” he said. “I wrote down the stuff that he said coming out of break. Literally, I studied for this like no other. I wanted to absolutely crush it.”
It sounds as if Rodgers impressed executives immediately in the “Jeopardy!” equivalent of a walkthrough.
“I know they didn’t expect what I was about to bring, but I was just so prepared,” he said. “I was so ready. So we get into the first game, the first run-through, there’s 30 questions in a Jeopardy round, and after the first 15 questions, we go to break. They say it in your earpiece, ‘Take it to break.’ So I take it to break, and there was a pause, and I think everyone was like, ‘Whoa, OK, this guy kind of knows what he’s doing here.’
“… My whole thing was I felt like the best way to honor Alex’s memory was to be so dialed in and so ready, and that’s the approach I took. So I was ready to rock and roll.”
Rodgers has had some “Jeopardy!” success in the past, winning “Celebrity Jeopardy!” in 2015 by ousting astronaut and current U.S. Senator Mark Kelly as well as entrepreneur and “Shark Tank” star Kevin Leary.
The 37-year-old follows an impressive lineup of guest hosts that have taken over since Trebek passed away last year, which have so far included Ken Jennings, Mike Richards, Katie Couric and Dr. Mehmet Oz.
If Rodgers’ preparation and how he describes how things went is true, perhaps there will be calls for the quarterback to be the permanent host of the game show.
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