Lame: What is sports shaming of 'Jeopardy!' contestants?

Written By Vinnie Iyer

It happens every few months. We sports fans and journalists get to make fun of how "Jeopardy!" contestants don't know the question to an obvious sports answer.

The latest clip came from a trio of celebrities on the "Power Players Week" episode that aired Tuesday. Three news media types, CNN's Anderson Cooper, CBS's Lara Logan and MSNBC's Michael Steele, who all whiffed in not knowing Cam Newton was the Carolina Panther who was the first rookie to pass for over 4,000 yards in a season.

MORE: Cam  Newton's celebrations, in photos

It's May in the NFL, and it's Cam and the NFL, so it's natural it became a sports story everywhere, from Sporting News to ESPN.

The thing is, this happens on a regular basis on regular "Jeopardy!", let alone the star-powered, dumbed-down editions.

People who are into history, geography, literature, the arts and the sciences routinely have blank stares when confronted with what seem like softball sports categories. Those categories get avoided like the plague, to the point all three contestants are hoping time will end in the round before being forced to select even the easiest clue.

For those of us who want the tougher sports trivia viewing experience, they did invent "Sports Jeopardy!", which has been a great success. For the rest of us, it's time to be better than shaming otherwise smart people for what they don't know about sports.

We're not 100 percent sure we know that Cam Newton knows this son of fashion icon Gloria Vanderbilt who hosts a show on CNN, but if he didn't, we wouldn't poke fun at him for it.

Ha, ha, can you believe the guy who played in front of a global audience at Super Bowl 50 doesn't even know the guy who hangs out with Kathy Griffin on New Year's Eve? For all that time Newton spends training hard for his job, being charitable to children and maintaining his own fashion sense instead of watching CNN, we wouldn't give a flip if he was oblivious to Cooper's existence.

CASH: Newton a community's prince

It seems silly to us sports fans that someone on "Jeopardy!" would more likely to know this man developed the oral polio vaccine (Who is Albert Sabin?) than this man who just coached Alabama to another college football national championship (Who is Nick Saban?). But from their perspective, what happens on a field in Tuscaloosa isn't as important as what happened to help cure a terrible children's disease.

"Jeopardy!" is a trivia show, and in its realm of useful knowlege, knowing sports is the most useless toward a contestant winning.

PHOTOS: Cam Newton on camera

This sports fan and journalist did win on Jeopardy! once. I remember almost every question I got right or wrong those 18 years ago. I especially recall a Video Daily Double in which all I had to do was recognize the silhouette of Michael Jordan. I had to do a double take on how easy it was, given I was a) a big Jordan fan and b) I actually owned his namesake cologne which featured that logo.

For many on that show, I realize the outline of his bald head and shoulders might be harder than recognizing the border outline of Burkina Faso (this country in Africa was once known as Upper Volta).

It's not just sports, or only "Jeopardy!". Funny clips of people being ignorant about something or other go viral every day.

It only means that when something similiar happens in another couple of months, there will be another post. Heck, maybe the contestants will do one better and have no idea who Stephen Curry is. Jackpot for $2,000, Alex.

No matter what even the best "Jeopardy!" contestant knows, there's a lot more he or she doesn't know. More often than not, sports is that glaring weakness.

Watching how smart some people are on "Jeopardy!" can be a source of envy. When we get a sports question that stumps them, it feels like a "gotcha" moment for which we've been waiting.

General knowledge-shaming ourselves is no fun. Thanks to sports, for once, we are allowed to turn the table on those know-it-alls.