Joe Buck is ready to be a game show host again.
Buck confirmed on Is This A Great Game, Or What? with Tim Kurkjian that he will host the upcoming ESPN Jeopardy! — which was first reported by Front Office Sports earlier this month — and is set to stream on Disney+ and Hulu this summer.
This won’t be Buck’s first time behind the Jeopardy! podium. He served as a guest host in 2021 during the carousel of fill-ins that followed Alex Trebek’s passing, the same stretch that ended with producer Mike Richards selecting himself as permanent host before stepping down almost immediately after past embarrassing podcast comments came to light. Ironically, Richards said in a 2024 People Magazine interview that Buck took to the hosting role quicker than any of the other guest hosts that auditioned.
“Yeah, I’m excited,” Buck said. “When Alex passed away, and they went through one guest host after another, probably the most famous of which was Aaron Rodgers doing a week — I think he might’ve done two — I was in that mix. Now, I showed up there, it’s like when I’ve done GMA. I just did it this year as a host a few times, and there’s a very freeing way to go about something like that when you don’t want the job. I didn’t want the full-time job, but I wanted to say A, that I had done Jeopardy! and B, I wanted to see if I could do it well.”
Buck said the skills that come with calling live sports translated naturally to Jeopardy! format, pointing specifically to the kind of improvisational thinking required when a moment like Matt Stairs ripping a home run deep into the night during Game 4 of the 2008 NLCS happens with no warning, and you have to be ready for it.
The show shoots next week. Buck said it will feature predominantly ESPN personalities as contestants, but the subject matter will extend well beyond the traditional four major sports. The format will also differ meaningfully from the standard Jeopardy! setup. Rather than the traditional half-hour structure, this version runs an hour, includes Triple Jeopardy, and is built around actually getting to know the contestants rather than the brief, often awkward 30-second anecdotes that have been a staple of the show for decades.
“The difference is with this show — not to get too in the weeds — is it’s an hour-long show,” Buck said. “So it’s not as hurried. There’s Triple Jeopardy in this. You’re going to get to know the contestants instead of just the ‘Hey, well, it says here that you ate a donut once while riding a unicycle. Tell us about that,’ and then they go back to the game. It’s going to be — I think — some moments for light kind of moments in the show.”
Buck was also careful to note that the show’s success will depend on respecting everything that makes Jeopardy! what it is to its most devoted fans, the specific language Trebek used, the way he walked on stage, the way he thanked announcer Johnny Gilbert before moving directly to the contestants and the board.
“What you realize when you do Jeopardy! is it is so special to people who are lifers with that show that if you take it in any different direction or you don’t use the exact words that Alex used, you’re going to fail,” Buck said. “It’s not a bet, it’s a wager.”
The show will not be open to the general public as contestants, which is a departure from Dan Patrick’s version of Sports Jeopardy! that ran for three seasons on Crackle and featured 116 episodes with regular fans competing. Whether that limits the show’s appeal to viewers who would have loved the chance to test their own sports knowledge remains to be seen, but with Buck behind the podium and an hour-long format designed to let the show breathe, ESPN Jeopardy! at least sounds like something worth watching.
