Alex Trebek died on Sunday after a prolonged battle with Pancreatic Cancer.

He was 80 years old.

In a somewhat random but cool crossover, Eagles defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz shouted out the late Jeopardy host in Peter King’s Football Morning in America column:

What would you say if I told you an NFL coach believes he tuned up for his current job by watching the show?

“Alex Trebek and Jeopardy! trained me to be a football coach,” Eagles defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz told me Sunday afternoon.

“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. 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.

“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.”

Hmmm..

So Schwartz was influenced by Alex Trebek…

And the Eagles’ defense was awesome during the Super Bowl season…

Therefore, is Alex Trebek partially responsible for the Eagles’ success? I sure hope so. That’s the story we’re going with.

RIP Alex.

Update –

Schwartz spoke more about this at today’s press conference: