Over the last couple of weeks, Russell Hantz has started a podcast talking about his perspective on Survivor related things. All in all, it has been surprisingly informative and entertaining despite in a positive sense. On one episode, he had Coach Wade to talk about various subjects and the subject of Survivor legends came about and both men claimed that Rob Cesternino was not a legend. He has also gone on a twitter rant about this because would it be Russell Hantz not to tweet about his beliefs?

Look, Russell is entitled to any stupid opinion he wants to hold but to come out publicly and say this is where I have to step in. Rob Cesternino is the reason Russell Hantz even got a chance to play Survivor because without Rob playing the game, it would have died out a long time ago because of its predictability.

When it comes to the strategic aspect of Survivor, it took a few seasons to really start moving. The first couple of seasons featured an alliance sticking together until the end and the tribe that went into the merge with numbers would eventually birth a winner. Survivor: Marquesas was the first real power shift of the series. The Rotus were undone when Neleh and Paschal realized their place in the pecking order and swung to the other side to better their position. Marquesas established that the bottom did not need to simply accept that they were at the bottom.

Then things reverted back to normal for Survivor: Thailand where Brian Heidik’s iron grip on the game did not leave much room for creativity. Thankfully for the continued success of the show, Survivor: the Amazon came along next and gave us one of Survivor’s earliest superstars, Rob Cesternino. Rob was a television fan and aspiring comedian. He was actually an applicant for Big Brother but was moved over to Survivor instead. Rob was brilliant, sharp witted and a natural in front of the camera.

Out in the Amazon, Rob was determined to play a cutthroat game. Having been cast, he made it his mission to go back and analyze the show as best he could. Watching the older seasons, it became clear to him that everything about Survivor was a numbers game and that the people at the bottom of any given alliance would be the easiest ones to try and flip. Rob filed that away and went out for a trip to the Amazon.

Early on, Rob knew that he had to fit in with the men by being the funny one. It is established early on that he was the guy making jokes and keeping things light. That was true but it was also a great veneer for the strategic mind that was hidden behind those jokes. He made bonds early with Matthew von Ertfelda, seeing him as a nothing strategically but a very capable physical player. At the tribe swap, he formed an alliance with Deena Bennett because as he saw it, they were the two people least likely to be allied.

Much of Rob’s strategy unfolded in the post-merge. He engineered the Roger Sexton and Dave Johnson vote outs without so much as a push against him. During that time, he also started using Matt as a way to form a bond with Butch Lockley, calling it a chain of command. Rob would tell Matt useless information that he would then relay to Butch, keeping both busy and occupied on his side while neither of them tried to conspire against him.

Peace out old man Rodger

Having voted out the people he wanted gone the most, Rob then went to work at establishing his dominance in the game. He flipped on Deena, because Deena approached Jenna and Heidi about voting off Alex. This did not sit well with the women who went to Rob for help. For Deena, it was too soon into the merge to attempt such a move and seeing a needed casualty when it appeared in front of him, Rob flipped on Deena. With the flip, Rob was now with Heidi Strobel, Jenna Morasca and Alex Bell. Following the Deena vote off, Alex told Rob he was planning on cutting him at the final four. This of course sent alarm bells ringing in Rob’s head and sent him into motion. He used his chain alliance with Matt and Butch, up until that point a fake alliance, swayed Christy Smith to his side and blindsided Alex right out of the game.

Jenna: not a fan of Rob’s flip

While that move gave him good position within the tribe, it also made him public enemy number one with Heidi and Jenna. While Marquesas had shown the audience that alliances could be flipped, the Amazon was about to show us that a person could flip back after having betrayed an alliance. With Christy now loudly proclaiming her status as a swing vote, Rob decided best to convince Heidi and Jenna to mend fences if only for one vote and take out Christy. The two girls did not like Christy on a personal level and it made it easy for Rob to get them to agree. In doing so, he also brought himself back into the fold with the girls.

Suddenly, Rob was in the final five with four people, two on each side, who believed to be in an alliance with him. He ultimately decided to side with the men and vote out Heidi at the final five. A surprise Jenna immunity win forced Rob to rely heavily on Matthew to vote out Butch at final four and suddenly Rob was in the final three as the top contender to go all the way to the end and win.

Unfortunately, throughout the season Rob had also been coaching Matthew on how to play Survivor. Matthew was a huge physical threat and won a bunch of challenges in the post-merge game. Rob constantly warned Matthew about winning too much and cautioned him to start throwing challenges as a way to diminish his target. Sadly for Rob, Matthew decided to heed his advice at the worst possible moment and threw the final three immunity challenge. Rob was also unable to win and Jenna was smart enough to not take Rob to the final tribal council. Like Kathy Vavrick-O’Brien, Rob had become the fan favorite to fall just short of the prize.

Besides his amazing strategic gameplay, Rob became one of the first comedians on Survivor. Some people had been funny before, like Rudy Boesch’s old man earnestness or Colby Donaldson’s one liners but Rob had charisma and natural charm that made him funny all of the time. He was a pop culture reference machine and he knew how to structure jokes in a way that would make people laugh. Just take a look at his highlight reel which draws inpsiration from Mario Lanza’s Funny 115 1.0 entry about Rob:

… that is someone who knows how to make great TV.

Nowadays someone like Rob C, a superfan who loves the strategy of it all, would often simply focus on how the game plays out. You have players like Spencer Bledsoe or Zeke Smith, guys who are likely very funny people in real life, constantly talking about the game and the numbers. Rob did a lot of that but he was so much more than a gamebot. Rob was a fully defined personality who also happened to be very good at the game.

After the Amazon, Jeff Probst called Rob the best player to never win the game. He became one of the most popular players from the era of Survivor. When Survivor: All-Stars came to be, Rob was one of the most obvious selections to complete the roster. We don’t need to address how that season went for him because it was pre-determined by a bunch of the players that certain contestants were just never going to win All-Stars. Rob was one of them.

Once his Survivor career had ended, Rob kept being an icon in the Survivor community. In 2010 he founded Rob Has a Podcast after having played around with his first podcast, the Fishbowl. RHAP has since become a pillar in the Survivor world. Thanks to his connections to the show, Rob has been able to get previous contestants to appear from the beginning of his tenure. Rob’s personality lends itself brilliantly to the podcast format and his skills as an interviewer are second to none.

For many people like myself, RHAP has given Survivor fans a new place to discuss and ingest Survivor content. Instead of getting only the 42 minute episode and secret scenes, we now get a bunch of extra material stemming from Rob’s post-game interviews and episode recaps with Survivor alumni. Rob has changed the way people think about Survivor thanks to his extensive analysis of the game.

On top of that, along with Josh Wiggler, Rob has since created the Evolution of Strategy where they take each season chronologically and do an in-depth dive into it. Some of the greatest Survivor jokes and observations have come from that project and it deserves every bit of reverence it gets with the fans.

There is no debate that Rob Cesternino is a Survivor legend from his on-screen performance alone. When you factor in everything he has done for the show with RHAP, it’s a no brainer. Rob is a Survivor hall of famer and deservedly so. Russell Hantz can spew all the garbage he wants about who is a legend and who isn’t but he’s got to ask himself this: why did he even start a podcast about Survivor? I wonder who his influence was. Maybe the guy that has come to you live from his apartment for the last seven years?