What is Auburn (according to Jeopardy)

November 26, 2019 was a red-letter day in the illustrious history of orange and blue-tinged “Jeopardy” episodes.

Bo Jackson and Cam Newton were adjacent answers — or questions, or whatever — in the “After Winning The Heisman” category.

Yep, not one, but two Auburn references — back to back. Pretty impressive.

Since 2014, hardly a year has passed between at least passing references to the Plains on the longstanding quiz show, be it a question (or answer or whatever) about Cam or, yes, the Kick Six.

Here’s a look at every instance (that we know about) of Auburn stuff popping up on that iconic blue screen during the past decade.

One of the most unusual references was 2010 national championship question on a 2017 episode, and no one got it right — technically, not even Alex.

In late 2016, thinking that Auburn was in the Pac-12 cost a contestant named Justin $2,000, and on a true Daily Double no less:

Earlier that year, fact checkers deemed the irony of a school’s colors not matching the color it’s kinda sorta named for worthy of the “College Colors” category:

You could almost hear the tsk, tsk, tsk in Alex Trebek’s instant “no” when poor Terry thought Auburn’s nickname was the Crimson Tide that January:

A few weeks before that, just before Christmas 2015, saw what was arguably the show’s most direct tip of the trivia hat toward the city of Auburn itself:

It only took the guy a second to get this one right…

From back in 2014: “THE TIDE MOST CERTAINLY DOES NOT ROLL AT THIS SCHOOL ESTABLISHED IN 1856 AS THE EAST ALABAMA MALE COLLEGE.”

Mack Brown wishes…

During a 2011 “Colleges and Universities” Daily Double, Alex complimented Auburn’s pigskin prominence while simultaneously insulting contestant Christopher’s grasp of the gridiron in what was decade’s first orange and blue blip on the “Jeopardy!” radar.

Auburn and “Jeopardy!” have also crossed pop cultural paths beyond questions and answers in recent years.

There’s been a contestant or two from the Loveliest Village in the past 10 years, including an Auburn University English professor who offered a “War Eagle!” in her “Hometown Howdy” promo.

In September 2014, “Jeopardy!” legend Ken Jennings included wearing “an Auburn cap” in a multiple choice Slate.com quiz question about religious expression. A few weeks before that, Lee County native Elizabeth Williams, who went viral for referencing “Cheers” in her Final Jeopardy answer, said she’d actually wished she’d written “War Eagle.”

“Jeopardy!” isn’t the only game show with a rich Auburn history; an almost uncanny number of Auburn fans seem to have come on down on “The Price is Right” over the years. And you can’t forget “The Feud.”

from The War Eagle Reader https://www.thewareaglereader.com/2020/07/what-is-auburn-according-to-jeopardy/