You may have seen in the news recently that Jeff Probst is apparently in trouble with his wife over Survivor. Allegedly he has been told to quit the show to focus more on his family life with his wife and step-children. One should consider the source of this news. Radar Online is not exactly the most credible place on the web and is more of a Zellers version to TMZ’s Walmart. Then again, who would just go on the internet to tell lies?

It’s a tough world out there Buster.

Regardless of how fake or real this piece of news may be, it acts as an excuse to have a fun little exercise in thought. Who would replace Jeff Probst as host of Survivor, provided they don’t just outright stop doing the show without him? Plenty of choices are abound. Some think they should look outside the franchise for a fresh face. Others point to certain people already in production. Those are both legitimate choices of many different people but not very fun for us.

Let’s stick to Survivor alumni who might step in and fill the role in Jeff’s absence. Now we have all heard the obvious ones. Colby Donaldson could do a fine job having been the host of Top Shot and Jeff would recommend him highly considering that Jeff is in love with Colby. Jonathan Penner gets tossed around a lot since he’s a three-timer with a lot of on-screen experience as an actor. He also has a relationship with Probst, though it may be slightly more adversarial than Colby’s. John Cochran and Boston Rob are two other legends that Probst loves to bring up as much as possible and have charisma that translates for many on screen. Parvati Shallow is an undeniable Survivor legend who already hosts Survivor related segments and shows and would be a fun twist on the whole thing.

There, those are the five most obvious answers someone will throw out whenever they talk about replacing Jeff. We got them out of the way in one paragraph so we can move on from them. It’s likely that those are actually the top Survivor alumni candidates but no one wants to read an article about the same five names over and over. Let’s move on and give you my list of slightly… quirkier picks.

Osten Taylor

Jeff would roll over in his grave if they brought in the OG quitter to take over his spot. It would be fantastic to see Osten have to go out and location and deal with the elements that defeated him over and over. The same way Jeff clearly loves his gig as host, Osten would probably openly hate it. Sign me up right now.

Jean-Robert Bellande

“39 days, 20 people, 1 Survivor and some ass”.

Kim Spradlin

She’s intelligent, eloquent and attractive. The one problem is that it would get repetitive to see every season with the cast deciding to award Kim the million dollars over them.

Heidi Hamels (aka Heidi Strobel)

The minute they offered her Jeff’s position, Heidi knew she was going to be the host of Survivor.

J.T. Thomas

He’s got the physical ability required to do Jeff’s job. He wouldn’t be afraid to do the ballsy stunts Jeff likes to do when shooting the intro package for a season given his history with ballsy moves. J.T. is personable and intelligent while also obviously understanding how Survivor functions. The only problem is that we would need captions for his tribal councils and they would last doubly long because the players wouldn’t be able to understand what he’s saying.

Julie Berry

She has a little bit of Jeff in her.

Randy Bailey

If you want to keep the tradition of having someone asking the tough questions at tribal, Randy is your man. He would go in on everybody for being useless at everything. As an added bonus, it would be fun to see his PTSD every time a fake idol is played.

Michael Skupin

Just don’t do a Survivor: Kids Edition.

Lillian Morris

She’s got the survival background down pat. The only downside would be seeing the host of Survivor cry every time somebody is voted out or treated unfairly by their tribe.

Coach Wade

Tribal council could be turned into story time with Coach. He would love to do the play-by-play for the challenges and would get extremely dramatic with it. Instead of voting people out as the players want, they now have to start voting people off based on strength. Except when it doesn’t fit with their plans in the game.

Stephenie LaGrossa

Imagine the questions she would ask at tribal council. “So tell me Bobby, why are you so retarded and gay?” The show would also get a free sponsor from Gigi’s restaurant. There’s nothing like a filet mignon from there, at least that’s what I hear.

Daniel Lue

I am just picturing the reaction if a random non-entity like Daniel was picked to take over Jeff’s spot. Hardcore fans would be completely confused while the people who only watch seasons live would likely not even know he played Survivor. Watching recruits trying to talk about Daniel’s game would be fun too. “Oh yeah I really admired the way Dan played the game”.

Jonny Fairplay