His team has won the Super Bowl, but now, Aaron Rodgers may be taking on his toughest challenge yet: pretending to be interested in Jeopardy! contestants' personal anecdotes.
The Green Bay Packers quarterback is set to begin a stint as Jeopardy! guest host on Monday. While he may seem like an unlikely pick, Rodgers has a relationship with the show, having won on Celebrity Jeopardy! in 2015.
It seems he's done quite a bit of preparation, too, telling ESPN he watched "hours and hours and hours of episodes" and took "pages and pages and pages" of notes.
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"Literally, I studied for this like no other," Rodgers told ESPN. "I wanted to absolutely just crush it."
In fact, Rodgers recalled that producers seemed surprised he was "so prepared," explaining, "I think everyone was like, 'Whoa, OK, this guy kind of knows what he's doing here.'"
In an interview on the show's YouTube channel, Rodgers also recalled thinking when he was a contestant on the show that taking over for Alex Trebek when he retires would be "a dream job," and he described the nostalgia he has about watching Jeopardy! as a kid when it was "a staple" in his grandparents' house.
Following Trebek's death last year, Jeopardy! has brought in a series of guest hosts starting with Ken Jennings and followed by Mike Richards, Katie Couric, and, controversially, Dr. Oz. Like the past few guests, Rodgers will be hosting for two weeks, after which he'll be passing the baton over to CNN's Anderson Cooper. The show has yet to select a replacement for Trebek, but when asked in a USA Today interview whether he'd host the show permanently, Rodgers said, "Hell yeah, I would." Brendan Morrow
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