Is it a sign that lingerie football has arrived, or a hint that CBS is trying some, um, edgier things to get viewers watching this fall?
That's a question some viewers may enjoy pondering, as Playboy model and Tampa lingerie football player Mikayla Wingle joins 15 other contestants on the fall cycle of CBS' Survivor: South Pacific.
Wingle, 22, calls her hometown Stanhope, N.J., and talks a lot in preview videos of countering the Garden State stereotypes powering MTV's hit Jersey Shore. (Better talk to the show's editors about that one, Miki!)
But Wingle also landed on Playboy's February cover as a cornerback and wide receiver for the Tampa Breeze, the local team from the Lingerie Football League.
And judging by her personal website, she has also worked a lot of modeling jobs across Florida, making her the default hometown favorite for Tampa Bay area Survivor fans.
According to CBS, there will be 18 castaways in the latest edition of Survivor, divided into two tribes of nine: the Savaii Tribe and the Upolu Tribe, named after the two islands of Samoa.
Still unnamed: the two Survivor alumni scheduled to join the South Pacific cycle, though fan websites predicted the pair will be Ben "Coach" Wade and Oscar "Ozzy" Lusth.
Many of those same websites also correctly predicted that Brandon Hantz, the 20-year-old nephew of longtime Survivor villain Russell Hantz, would be on this cycle of the show — a scoop confirmed by CBS' cast announcement Monday morning.
CBS declined to make Wingle available for interviews. But past newspaper articles indicate she was a standout basketball and softball player in high school, before tasking her talents to the LFL.
"In sports, if you don't like someone, you can be rude as you want to them," she said in a preview video, outlining her strategy to build a strong alliance quickly and lie to everyone else. "This game, you can't. You gotta pretend to like that person."
The show, filmed months ago, debuts at 8 p.m. Sept. 14 on WTSP-Ch. 10.
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