Ex-Cal Star Aaron Rodgers Chimes In on Ode to Alex Trebek

Classic moments in sports categories were provided by the Jeopardy! host, who died Sunday at age 80 after 37 years as lead man on long-running trivia show

Former Cal star and current Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers was among the people who paid their respects to Alex Trebek, the longtime host of "Jeopardy!" who died Sunday at age 80 after a battle with pancreatic cancer.

Trebek, a native of Sudbury, Ontario, was a sports fan, and many sports figures were fans of him, as Rodgers indicated with this Twitter message:

😭😭 6p weeknights will never be the same. So many great memories and thankful to have met him ❤️ # https://t.co/W6TLqJy2Ug

— Aaron Rodgers (@AaronRodgers12) November 8, 2020

Thoughts of Trebek evoke some of the great Jeopardy! moments that involved sports categories.

There was the USC student who had trouble with this question about the player who broke baseball's color barrier:

What made this mistake more significant was that the show was shown on Jackie Robinson Day. The blunder provoked hysteria among sports nerds, but USC student Xiaoke Ying went on to win the college contest.

Then there were these classic Jeoaprdy! sports flubs:

But none matches this ultimate classic that displayed nerds' sports knowledge, which is wrapped up with a great Alex Trebek line: "If you guys ring in and get this one, I will die."

Trebek took that sports-trivia disaster and ran with it, creating a new category of signals by football officials. Contestants had a little more success with that category:

Alas, no one will be as good at this as Alex Trebek was.

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Follow Jake Curtis of Cal Sports Report on Twitter: @jakecurtis53

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