Alex Trebek’s influence will carry on for decades and hours after the news of his passing, one NFL coach is crediting the Jeopardy host with helping to hone his skills as a play-caller.
While speaking with Peter King of NBC’s FMIA, Jim Schwartz opened up about how the game show host helped him craft his skills as a defensive coordinator.
“Alex Trebek and Jeopardy! trained me to be a football coach,” Schwartz said.
“In football, as a play-caller, you’ve got to be very quick, you’ve got to enunciate the play well when you call it, you can’t make errors. Those are all things Alex was so good at. His command of the show and the contestants was incredible. You need that kind of command when you’re in charge of a team too.”
A Georgetown University graduate, Schwartz admitted that his love for Jeopardy started during his Sophomore year and carried over to his time as a coach.
“When I was a sophomore, junior and senior at Georgetown [in 1986-89], every night after dinner, me and a big group, maybe six guys, would watch the show,” he said. “Very smart guys. We were speed-readers, very competitive. It was a challenge to see who could blurt the answer out the fastest. You might know the answer, but if you don’t do it very fast, you’d lose. With my friends, if you were a little slow, you’d get steamrolled.”
Trebek, 80, passed away after a 20-month battle with pancreatic cancer.
