---

BY MENGHAN JIN

In print | Published September 16, 2010

From being held up at gunpoint to rescuing an injured rock climber already 13,000 feet up a mountain in the dead of winter, Marty Piombo ’84 has had anything but a boring life. And now, at 48 years old, the Swarthmore alum and former Yahoo! executive is finally facing his ultimate challenge: having his turn at trying to outplay, outlast and outwit nineteen other contestants in the Nicaraguan wilderness on CBS’s long-running reality TV show, “Survivor.”

“I always thought that it was the ultimate challenge both to combine athletic . . . endurance and the difficulties — limited food, no shelter, no clothing, no amenities — with the psychological aspect of the game,” Piombo said.

Now in its twenty-first season, the game of “Survivor” forces a diverse group of 20 strangers to brave the harsh conditions of uninhibited areas of the world together for 39 days. One contestant is voted off each week, and at the end of the 39 days, the last one standing receives one million dollars and the title of Sole Survivor.

“What does it take to win Survivor? You need to use your brain; you need to have heart; you need to use your body and you need to use your gut for instincts. And Marty has a marvelous combination of those four qualities,” longtime friend John Longley ’85 said.

During his four years at Swarthmore, Piombo, a political science major, kept himself physically active by staying involved in athletics on campus. He was a member of the wrestling team and occasionally hurdled for the track team. “He’s really intense when he does stuff. He gets fully immersed in it,” friend and alum Doug Humphreys ‘84 said.

Piombo’s physical prowess will prove helpful when contestants compete for rewards, such as food and comfort items, like blankets and towels, as well as for their survival in the game, Longley said.
Swarthmore also prepared Piombo for the diversity of people he faced on this season of “Survivor,” with contestants ranging from a former NFL coach to a dog trainer and from a goat rancher to a medical student.

“Going to Swarthmore helped me psychologically fine-tune the way I dealt with people,” Piombo said. “There are people from every walk of life you can imagine [on “Survivor”], and the ability to be both tolerant and accepting . . . did help in that regard.”

Friends remember Piombo as a very funny and entertaining character in college. “He was hysterical,” Humphreys said. “All the stuff that he did — it was so clever and so intelligent that it was genius of itself but not necessarily of the kind that would earn him a good grade.”

Classes at Swarthmore, however, were not Piombo’s strong suit. “I probably butted the system a little bit while I was there,” he said. “I could have been a more applied student, let’s just say.”

Though professors and courses may not have stuck with Piombo throughout the years, the friends he made at Swarthmore have and remain to this day his closest circle of friends.

It was, in fact, this group of friends that convinced Piombo to apply to be a contestant on “Survivor: Nicaragua.” “Marty was made for either television or the movies in that he’s got a larger-than-life personality. Marty . . . just commands center stage,” Longley said.

Since the show has just started to air on CBS, Piombo was unable to divulge any spoilers. He did say, however, that what concerned him most was the possibility of other contestants perceiving him as a villain, which could potentially work against him in the show. “I’m sure I come off . . . as the guy that’s too smart for his own good – he’s kind of aloof; he’s a corporate guy; he’s worked in big companies, managed a lot of revenues; he went to a fancy school and all of that,” he said.

But Piombo went into the game with a specific strategy in mind: build an alliance with a group of women and be calculatingly ruthless until he reached the end.

“How long he’ll last, I don’t know,” host Jeff Probst said in an interview with Entertainment Weekly. “I can see him going for a while, though. Don’t know if he can win, don’t know if he’s likable enough to win and don’t know if he knows that.”

Wednesday night marked the season premiere of “Survivor: Nicaragua” and right off the bat, the twenty contestants were split into two tribes based on age.

“This season’s format of young versus old is perfect for Marty. . . . He still has the ability to both think and act like a college student. That said, he’s also matured into what will be an astucious player, both subtle and cunning. That combination will serve him very well,” Longley said.

Piombo’s friends have no doubt that Marty will be a big player in this season’s “Survivor.”

“The question is not whether he’ll be a successful contestant. The question is: will he go all the way and win the million dollars?” Longley said. “My money is on Marty.”

---

« RETURN TO NEWS

« PREV ARTICLE | NEXT ARTICLE »