Former NFL running back Rashad Jennings faced the board above on last week’s episode of “Celebrity Wheel of Fortune.” He was playing to win money for the Rashad Jennings Foundation. announcing the right letter would win the game and nearly $5000 for his foundation, whose mission is to “ignite students with a passion for reading and literacy through offering incentives for their efforts.”
Rashad stared at the board, considered the options for __UENTIN, and announced, “P!” The ex-athlete was well-advised to make light of the embarrassing episode, and posted the video of his gaffe on Twitter/X, but if The Rashad Jennings Foundation doesn’t re-brand itself quickly, with the name of someone whose major exposure other than NFL games is failing a basic literacy test that a 5th Grader should pass, its leadership will be breaching its fiduciary duty.
Naturally, there were some fans who tried to makes excuses for Jennings on social media, like one who wrote, “I mean it really is bad, but if he doesn’t know who he is, can’t really blame him too much….” one desperate defender wrote. Sure you can. I don’t blame him for not knowing the director’s name, but I do blame him for being so shaky in his language skills that that space before a “U” on the board didn’t immediately suggest that best guess was “Q.” Or did Jennings think PUENTIN is how to spell “penguin”?
It doesn’t matter. I applaud Jennings for partnering with a child literacy program, but part of his own fiduciary and ethical duty as part of the leadership of the foundation is to avoid making it look ridiculous and ineffective. The least he could have done was bone up by playing a few Scrabble games before setting himself up to fail on national television.
Ethics Alarms 
I would, personally, give Jennings some slack. Because, even as a professional broadcaster who had experience in live situations on-air, and on-stage with taskmasters like Jack Marshall, I had a similar ‘brain fart’ about a Mark Twain book title in 1988 on the set of Jeopardy. Fortunately, it did not cost me the game and I went on to win because of a “Thank you, God” Final Jeopardy question. (Explanatory anecdote: in the summer of 1987 I wrote, produced and voiced a 13-week series of daily sixty second spots for Armed Forces Radio on the bicentennial of the US Constitution. Fast forward to January, 1988 and I’m on Jeopardy, $200 ahead of the returning champion. Final Jeopardy will determine which of us wins and who goes home. Alex Trebek turns to the game board and says, “Today’s Final Jeopardy category: the US Constitution.” “I’ll bet it ALL, Alex!”)
There was a “Hollywood Squares” rip-off called “Celebrity Sweepstakes.” the idea was that the audience would punch in which of the celebrities were most likely to know the answer to a particular question. That would set odd on each, and the contestants would “bet” on the celeb they chose to answer the question, with the money won determined by the odds. Carol Wayne, who played blonde bimbo idiots, was a regular panelist and was brilliant: as the show went on, her odds went from 100-1 against to 1-1, because who almost never failed to get the right answer. On one episode Wolfman Jack was one of the celebrities, and the question was on Sixties rock music. His odds were 1-1, and the happy contestant bet everything he had on the Wolfman: it was not even a tough question, something like “What group sang “Dead Man’s Curve”? Wolfman couldn’t answer it—I’ve never seen anyone look so embarrassed on TV in my life.
Exactly what I mean. Mental vapor lock happens. I hung out with Wolfie a few times at the Hard Rock in DC; he hosted a syndicated weekend oldies show from there and one of the people I worked with had a weekend side gig running his mixing board so I was invited to attend. I am confident that if you’d asked Wolfman Jack the question 100 times, he’d have given the correct answer 99 times.
But would he have known that the missing letter in __UENTIN is Q?
At least 99 times out of 100.
“The least he could have done was bone up by playing a few Scrabble games before setting himself up to fail on national television.”
At the risk of Neil Dorr-ing you,
Scrabble, which does not allow proper nouns, would not have prepared Mr. Jennings for “_uentin Tarantino” at all.
–Dwayne
Excellent Neil immitation! But Scrabble DOES teach you to always hold on to “u’s” in case you get a 10 pt Q.