I’m Glenn Birkemeier (anagram: “Grin, Men Like Beer”). I was on the writing squad for ESPN Jeopardy! (”Joe’s Nerdy App”), and I had a blast with every category I wrote.
My favorite one never made the actual show. It was in rehearsal. Yes, we talkin’ about practice. Contestants don’t come in cold; they run through practice material to get comfortable with phrasing answers as questions, working the buzzer, wagering on Daily Doubles, Final Jeopardy!, and so on. Every contestant saw the same rehearsal set, so I got to watch everyone take a swing at one of the goofier categories I wrote:
Here’s your chance to see if you’d have done as well as Hannah Storm (”North Shaman”), Kevin Negandhi (”Need Viking? Nah.”), Jeremy Schaap (”Preach Ye Jams”), Kyle Brandt (”Talk By Nerd”), and Keegan-Michael Key (”I Heckle A Geeky Man”) and all the others, including the one contestant who admitted they didn’t remember what an anagram was at first.
Easy, right? Like a lob city assist from Chris Paul. I don’t think anyone missed it in rehearsal. So here’s a harder one: Three players have recorded 1,000 assists in an NBA season. John Stockton did it seven times, Isiah Thomas once, and so did a 1970s Pistons guard who isn’t in the Hall of Fame. If you can name him, I think you’d do pretty well on the show.
Jon Hamm nailed Trail Blazers on the celebrity episode, joking there wasn’t much competition for “Oregon team.” That episode is packed with trash talk — worth a watch if you’ve ever wanted more of that on Jeopardy! For the record, the tallest Blazer ever was 7’5” Slavko Vranes, who logged a grand total of three career minutes.
Speaking of bizarre talls, the amazing 7’4” Rik Smits, the only NBA player ever out of Marist College, is now a serious motocross rider. I assume his bikes are custom.
OK. Look, I think both are genuinely very smart. Only very smart people could be devious enough to successfully rig things for the Knicks (kidding! Kind of). Most people who’ve held the title of Commissioner in sports aren’t morons, even if it is part of the anagram. Fun fact: in 80 seasons, the NBA has had only five commissioners. The ABA had seven in its single decade of existence, the last of whom played Major League Baseball.
Hope you enjoyed NBA Anagrams. Drop your favorite sports anagrams (NBA or otherwise) in the comments. As the promos almost used to say: the NBA, it’s “Actin’ Fast!”
I’m Dan Hopper, and I was genuinely thrilled to combine my lifelong hardcore sports obsession with my love of Jeopardy! as one of the new ESPN Jeopardy! writers. If you’re a sports fan like me, you already know nothing captures the true spirit of peak athletic competition like three people at podiums rigorously recalling minute details of stuff.
Here is my favorite Final Jeopardy! from this season.
Early on, I asked our Co-Head Writer Billy Wisse how “clever” he wanted the clues versus how “straightforward.” He told me to go for it in the “cleverness” department because we can always dial back the cuteness later.
That was permission to lean into my most irritating instincts. Every time I wrote something and thought, “I don’t know, this clue is soooo cutesy, the writers are gonna roll their eyes,” I wrote it anyway. Almost invariably, those clues got the best reactions. Turns out trivia nerds love annoyingly clever stuff. I felt extremely at home here.
With Final Jeopardy! I love an “aha” moment when you know you’ve got it right. On this one, the wording of the clue quite literally doesn’t make any sense until you think of the correct response, at which point you know it can only be that. Plus, as a lifelong suffering Pirates fan, I was happy to get Dock Ellis’ no-no into a question.
My name is Peter Scott, and I’m one of the three lucky applicants chosen to serve as rookie writers on the debut season of ESPN Jeopardy! I hope you enjoy the show as much as we enjoyed writing it.
I’m not a Commanders fan, but I’ve lived in Washington for decades, and I had a hunch that former owner Dan Snyder would provide good material.
In 2011, the Washington City Paper ran Dave McKenna’s “Cranky Redskins Fan’s Guide to Dan Snyder — From A to Z“, an alphabetical catalog of the owner’s failings that demonstrated the unbelievable insanity and pettiness that made him the most widely despised owner in all of pro sports. Snyder had a history of shady ventures, including long-distance phone “slamming”, before he became a team owner, and he ran the franchise the same way he ran all the fraudulent enterprises that made him rich in the first place.
Snyder responded to the story in characteristic fashion by suing the publication, which of course only sent more readers to it. I later met the author through a mutual friend, and I always thought of that piece whenever Snyder generated another round of bad press with some outrageous bullying behavior towards his terrified employees out at the team’s complex in Northern Virginia. And he made the news almost daily — and it was always negative.
Worth remembering: across his 24-year ownership, the team played in just six postseason games, winning two, and never coming close to a Super Bowl or even a conference title.
I opened with the same-day firing of Mike and Kyle Shanahan in 2013. Mike, a two-time Super Bowl winner, has one of the most influential coaching trees in the league. His son Kyle is regarded as one of the game’s great innovators and has coached San Francisco to consistent success. But Snyder had grown close to quarterback Robert Griffin III, and when RGIII complained about the Shanahans, they were handed their walking papers.
In 2002, he fired coach Marty Schottenheimer and personnel exec John Schneider. Schottenheimer is likely to reach the Hall of Fame, and Schneider went on to build the Seahawks team that won Super Bowl LX in 2026.
I had a good feeling about the category when Joe Buck couldn’t read it out loud without cracking up. Hopefully it gives viewers a sense of the insanity and ineptitude that defined the Snyder era in Washington. And even though I’ve run out of coaches, I haven’t even touched the front-office firings yet. There’s probably enough there for Part Two.
Stream all episodes of ESPN Jeopardy! on Disney+, Hulu, and the ESPN app.
New episodes of Jeopardy! premiere Monday September 14! Watch weeknights and stream the latest 5 episodes next day on Hulu & Peacock: https://bit.ly/WatchJeopardy
Stream Season 2 of Pop Culture Jeopardy! on Netflix.
Want to be on the show? It all starts with the Jeopardy! Anytime Test!
Take the Jeopardy! Test here: http://bit.ly/Jeopardy-Test
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.