With beards on the line, who would you pick on your trivia team: Stephen Colbert or Alex Trebek? Colbert seems to think he’d be the victor.
Either Stephen Colbert himself or his writing team on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert are big fans of game shows in general or of Jeopardy! specifically. It kind of seems like the real answer is Colbert, but we don’t want to say that and make a writer feel bad.
Anyway, with both Colbert and Alex Trebek sporting new facial hair, Colbert decided to make it known that he’d be willing to try his hand at beating Trebek for the right to bear a beard on national television. Naturally, it’d be a trivia contest.
Here’s the thing. Would Colbert actually win? Trebek has been hosting Jeopardy! for 35 seasons, and presumably he’s picked a thing or two up over the years. But Colbert is a legitimate nerd, and with legitimate nerdery comes certain expectations about how much fluff of dubious usefulness you can fit into your brain, the kind of fluff that has a penchant for showing up on Jeopardy!.
Really, the only way to truly find out who reigns supreme in the extremely narrow category of TV hosts with a penchant for trivia is to actually host the competition. We’re pretty sure Trebek could find time in his busy Jeopardy! shooting schedule to fly across the country to make an appearance on Colbert’s show.
Perhaps the best bet would be for it to be neutral territory, though. Maybe James Corden can take time off from his karaoke and musical work and put up The Late Late Show as territory for the two titans of trivia to square off once and for all?
Either way, we’d watch it, but we have to say: Colbert’s self-deprecating jokes about his beard are accurate. Trebek has the better facial hair.
(H/T: Entertainment Weekly)