'Survivor' Winner Ranking: Is Jeremy Collins In Top 10 Among Champions Or Lower Down The List? [POLL, VIDEO]
Jeremy Collins is the latest winner of CBS's Survivor - is he one of the best winners ever?
Jeremy was crowned the winner of Survivor: Cambodia - Second Chance on Wednesday, defeating Spencer Bledsoe and Tasha Fox in a 10-0-0 vote. For all intents and purposes, the clean sweep implies that Jeremy easily deserved to win out of this combination of players. But is that truly the case?
Quickly into Cambodia, Jeremy formed bonds with Tasha and the men of his Bayon tribe, a.k.a. Andrew Savage, Joe Anglim and Keith Nale. He would later take in Kimmi Kappenberg and Stephen Fishbach, who formed a seemingly unbreakable bond and voted out Monica Padilla. This was Jeremy's only Tribal Council until the merge.
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After the merge, Jeremy was part of the huge conglomeration of nine players against Abi-Maria Gomes, Ciera Eastin, Kass McQuillen and Kelley Wentworth. While Kass and Ciera were knocked out relatively early into the post-merge, Jeremy was blindsided when Kelley played her Hidden Immunity Idol and booted Andrew. Jeremy also went along with Stephen's plan to vote out Kelly Wiglesworth.
All the while, Jeremy tried to keep as many "meat shields" in the game as possible. Joe was a huge physical threat while Stephen was a big strategic threat, allowing Jeremy to ride along without being targeted. He played an Idol on Stephen during Ciera's boot, securing even further trust in Stephen, but Spencer flipped to work with Abi-Maria, Kelley and Keith Nale to blindside Stephen next.
Joe was finally targeted at the Final 8, voted out almost unanimously. Jeremy and his alliance of Spencer, Tasha and Kimmi then voted out Abi-Maria out of fear that she was the best candidate to take to the end. Kimmi wound up turning against Jeremy, Spencer and Tasha at the next vote to secure her own place in the Final 3 but it wound up backfiring and she was voted out in one of the craziest Tribal Councils ever.
Jeremy shored up his alliance with Spencer and Tasha and together, they voted out the last remaining tribe members, Keith and Kelley.
From what we saw on television, Jeremy managed to play a very strong social game and mostly stayed off people's radars, despite having a compelling personal story and a likable presence.
While Jeremy may not have played the flashiest game in Survivor history, he does have to be commended for winning what was clearly one of the most difficult seasons ever. Where does he rank in your winners list?
Survivor returns for another season on Wednesday, Feb. 17 at 8 p.m. ET/PT on CBS.
