Leave The ‘Jeopardy!’ Contestant Who Doesn’t Know The Raptors Alone

We call to order the case of the Internet vs. the Jeopardy! contestant that was unaware of the Toronto Raptors. The honorable me presiding (and defending the contestant). You may be seated.

Let’s get this out of the way — every human walking the planet doesn’t know every mascot of every sports team. You know who knows that stuff? Dorks, like us. Smart people that fill their brains with useful information tend to expunge things like statistics and the dates of historic sporting events and mascots. There is no shame in not knowing the Raptors are Toronto’s basketball team or that the Toronto Raptors even exist.

So knock off your gloating about how easy the answer was. You were 0-for-2017 with Final Jeopardy. Congrats on getting one right.

And if you don’t know about the Raptors, guessing timber wolf is pretty good. You can trace wolves back to the Pilocene Era, which occurred as far back as 25 million years ago. So when Alex Trebek reads the clue, “The animal on this NBA team’s primary logo peaked about 75 million years ago,” and you had no idea a team is named after a dinosaur, you can do worse under that type of pressure. What if some archaeologist digs up a 75-million-year-old wolf ancestor tomorrow? You’re going to feel real dumb.

There’s also the deceptive nature of the category — Sports Mascots.

Yeah, it works out that the Raptors mascot is The Raptor, but you can tell the person who put this answer together thinks nicknames and mascots are the same thing. The answer is about the logo, not the mascot, although the two are interchangeable in this case. But the Miami Hurricanes’ mascot isn’t a hurricane. The Stanford Cardinal’s mascot isn’t a cardinal.

Then there are the people getting on this woman for betting all her money. Sorry, but it takes guts to do that. Win big or don’t win it all. You have to respect that. Maybe she’s solid in her all other sports but not the NBA. She gambled and lost. You would have had -$5,000 and not have been allowed to participate in Final Jeopardy.

It’s bad enough when sports fans get on an athlete for walking a batter or missing a dunk; it’s worse when those same people are all over someone that doesn’t know sports on a trivia show that almost never has questions/answers on sports.

This would be like you on Sports Jeopardy screwing up the Final Jeopardy question because you didn’t know which element matched Shawn Kemp’s number on the periodic table. Get lost.

×