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A couple of months ago, I popped into a dive bar in my neighborhood for the very first time and was nursing a beer at the bar when the classic rock playing quietly in the background was suddenly interrupted by a voice loudly yelling “THIS. IS. JEOPARDY!” before the iconic theme song kicked in. Startled, I tried to figure out what was going on before realizing everyone had turned their attention to a TV in the corner and spent the next half hour yelling answers at the screen with a 60% success rate.
After realizing it’d been far too long since I had Alex Trebek in my life, I quickly set up my DVR to ensure I’d always have a backlog of episodes I can pull out whenever I’m in the mood to realize how little I know about classical music and 19th-century literature. However, based on a recent interview with Trebek, we might be slowly approaching the end of an era as he begins to consider retiring.
The G.O.A.T game show host sat down with TMZ to discuss the future of the show and revealed he’s toying with the idea of retiring in a couple of years— but he already has a couple of replacements in mind if he opts to hand the cards off to someone else:
“I mentioned to our producer not so long ago that the fellow who does play-by-play for the Los Angeles Kings— they should consider him… There is [also] an attorney, Laura Coates. She’s African-American and she appears on some of the cable news shows from time to time.”
The play-by-play guy he mentioned is Alex Faust, a 28-year-old who has only been calling Kings games for a year. Coates currently serves as a legal analyst for CNN but has appeared on a wide variety of media outlets.
Trebek says there’s a 50/50 chance he will retire when his Jeopardy! contract expires in 2020, which would end his 36-year dynasty as the host of the show. I’d like to thank him for giving me so much time to mentally prepare for the inevitable emotional blow that will come with him stepping down.