Jeopardy! host Ken Jennings is many things: a trivia savant, a Seahawks fan, and a father. But he is not a numbers guy.
Jennings, 51, admitted that his sports trivia knowledge is lacking in an interview with GQ on Wednesday.
“I really am not very good because I like a good narrative with my trivia. Sports have a narrative, but often sports as trivia is numbers," the game show host said. “The dates and the numbers are the part of trivia that’s often just a C for me.”
The Seattle native won Jeopardy! a record-setting 74 consecutive times before taking over as host. Now, he’s hotly anticipating his football team’s Super Bowl rematch against the New England Patriots on Sunday.
Jennings, who was born in Seattle two years before the Seahawks became a team, says sports statistics are all a blur for him, unless there’s a story involved.
“If it’s Dock Ellis throwing a no-hitter on LSD, there’s your story. But that’s why sports trivia is not really in my wheelhouse as much as it should be, I got to say,” Jennings reiterated.
Despite the great stories, Jennings still characterizes his football fandom as “really shameful skepticism.”
“To grow up in Seattle sports is to become accustomed to disappointment,” Jennings said. “You’re surprised by joy whenever something good happens to a Seattle sports team. Honestly, I think it’s made me a better person.”
He does remember one statistic that gives him hope for the upcoming matchup.
“The thing I just saw, which I’m sure you’ve seen, is that every time there’s a new Pope, the Seahawks go to the Super Bowl,” Jennings said. “That’s very good.”
In May of last year, Pope Leo XIV assumed the papacy after his predecessor Pope Francis died of a stroke. Now, the Seahawks are in the Super Bowl.
When Pope Francis was elected in March 2013, the Seahawks secured a Super Bowl birth, crushing the Denver Broncos by more than 30 points. In 2005, Seattle’s football team again reached the championship game after Pope Benedict XVI assumed office.
“You don’t want to tie your emotions too closely to a sports team,” Jennings said. “Yet now with the Seahawks in the Super Bowl… flying high.”
Jennings will have to wait till Sunday night to see his team battle it out against a Patriots team that defeated them in 2015.
Win or lose, Jennings will host Jeopardy! the following day, as he does every weekday.
