The cast for season 12 of "Dancing with the Stars" was revealed last night, and for those in the poker community, Phil Hellmuth's absence was notable, but also quite predictable.
Hellmuth made the mistake of tweeting that he might be part of the cast in December. Last year, former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Troy Aikman made a similar mistake when he prematurely announced he would be competing on Season 11 of the popular reality TV show on ABC.
Of course, ABC wants to make as big a deal out of the announcement. And network executives don't like their contestants jumping the gun, so when the field was announced last year and Aikman's name wasn't included, it wasn't a big surprise. Last year's snub of Aikman led the editorial team here at Casino City to quickly surmise that Hellmuth wouldn't be a part of Season 12, and lo-and-behold, we were right.
So Hellmuth now joins Aikman as a potential DWTS contestant that was so excited he spilled the beans and lost out on a chance to compete for the title. It led me to wonder, how does Hellmuth stack up against Aikman in other areas? Here's a quick "Tale of the Tape" comparison.
Represented the most-hated hated franchise
While the Dallas Cowboys have been referred to as "America's Team," fans of just about every other NFL franchise — especially fellow NFC East teams — will tell you that they take special pleasure in each and every Cowboys loss.
Hellmuth, on the other hand, recently parted ways with online poker room UB.com, which has suffered through a multitude of controversies and cheating scandals. He stayed relatively mum on the sordid affairs, and he was never connected to any of the scandals personally. That said, as much as people hate the Cowboys, UB.com draws a much more passionate hatred from certain segments of the poker community than the Dallas Cowboys ever could.