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Not so trivial: Seattle sports anchor scores three wins on ‘Jeopardy!’ and a ‘lifetime of memories’
In the midst of the Seattle Mariners’ win streak back in September, sports anchor Aaron Levine was going on a little run of his own, as a contestant on “Jeopardy!”
The episodes aired this week, and Levine, sports director for FOX 13 in Seattle, managed three wins in a row before bowing out in Thursday night’s episode of the popular game show.
Levine taped all four of his games over about four hours, with 15-minute breaks between them to switch outfits in the “champion’s changing room.”
“It’s a little jarring to win a game and then go back to change, and all of a sudden you’re pretending it’s a brand new day,” Levine told GeekWire on Friday. “No question there’s a mental fatigue aspect to it. I have a brand-new respect for anybody who can win multiple games in a day, let alone survive an entire day and then move on to the next tape day.”
A self-professed trivia geek, Levine majored in history at Stanford University and considers that category his strongest. It’s why he’s kicking himself for not getting Thursday’s Final Jeopardy question correct (about Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello) in the category “historic homes.”
Elsewhere in the game Thursday, Levine found what appeared to be a couple of softball Seattle clues, especially one about the Seahawks that he got right. But he failed to buzz in on a clue about billionaires and their kids’ inheritance — who is Bill Gates?!
Earlier in the week he did get a Daily Double question correct about Stanford, and he was especially pleased to be able to shout out his alma mater with a “Go Cardinal” fist pump.
And along the way this week, he made a fun nod to a classic “Key & Peele” sketch with the way he etched his name — “AA ron” — on his podium screen.
Growing up in Los Angeles, Levine watched “Jeopardy!” every night with his family and always wanted to be on the show’s teen tournament. He scored an appearance on “The Price is Right” at age 18, but when he went off to college, trivia wasn’t a part of his life.
Levine landed on TV again in 2004 when he was the national runner-up on the ESPN reality show “Dream Job,” which was a search for a new “SportsCenter” anchor.
It wasn’t until he was living in Gig Harbor, Wash., that he started going to trivia nights, winning free food at restaurants, and watching “Jeopardy!” again. And he started making his note cards in 2019.
The numerous boxes of index cards look like something out of a library’s filing system, and they serve as flash cards for Levine to test his knowledge on a range of subjects — literature, music, art, geography, religion, etc.
In the decades that “Jeopardy!” has been on the air, plenty of Seattleites have made appearances. Good Thinking Games CEO David Erb is a notable past champion, and Amazon employee Stephanie Hubley got a shout-out from Jeff Bezos for her appearance back in 2016.
Levine enjoyed getting to meet host Ken Jennings, who lives in Seattle, during limited time in which Jennings interacts with contestants during commercial breaks.
“You don’t get a lot of time to talk to him, but I did feel a sort of familiarity and kinship with him, knowing that not only is he from Seattle, but he’s a big Seattle sports fan, and that he’s a huge Mariners fan,” Levine said. “It was also cool because he was familiar with my work being on TV here in Seattle.”
Levine’s three wins are a long way from what Jennings achieved (winning 74 games), but his goal going into the experience was to win just one game, and he came away with a “lifetime of memories.”
“To be able to walk away from that stage and say, ‘Hey, I’m a ‘Jeopardy!’ champion’ and to have done that three times and qualify for a postseason tournament is more than I could have ever dreamed of,” Levine said. “I hope I didn’t embarrass myself too much on the stage.”
There’s nothing embarrassing about the money he walked away with — nearly $50,000 — and his plans for what he’ll do with it.
“It’s going into a college fund for my son,” Levine said of his 8-year-old. “It’s so relieving to me to just have a sum of money that can hopefully grow for the next 10 years.”
