Ball State University graduate and former tennis player Edgardo Rivera sat at Tribal Council of "Survivor: Fiji" with a smile on his face. Then, host Jeff Probst read his name from a parchment vote.
His smile disappeared.
The next four votes were for Rivera, who graduated from Ball State with a Bachelor's Degree in advertising, and he was voted off the show Thursday.
"When you're at tribal council, people don't look at you," he said. "A lot of people make that mistake, and they give it away. And they weren't looking at me, so I knew it was me."
Rivera, a native of Puerto Rico, was voted out on day 27 and became the fourth member of the jury that will decide who wins the game and $1 million.
He made it to the merge of the two tribes and the final nine before he was voted off the fourteenth installment of "Survivor." There were 19 contestants when the show began.
Rivera said he was not completely blindsided by the vote as it appeared on the show.
"I knew there was a 50-50 chance I was going to get voted out," he said.
Rivera had been in an alliance with Alex Angarita, Mookie Lee and Andria "Dreamz" Herd called "The Four Horsemen." However, Herd went against the alliance and Rivera was voted out.
"The hardest part of the experience was dealing with not very smart people," he said. "Dealing with Dreamz, dealing with Mookie, dealing with Stacy [Kimball], dealing with "Rocky" [James Reid], dealing with those people that think they know everything and they're actually not making any sense."
Although he was frustrated by some of the other contestants, Rivera said "Survivor" was a great experience.
"The best part of the experience is you get to know yourself really well," he said.
The experience of competing on the show was like experiencing an entire lifetime, he said.
"Every day is different," Rivera said. "You have a high one day and a low the next day. There's not a day that you have a normal day. It's either really low or really high."
Rivera said he was able to apply some of the knowledge he gained competing in collegiate tennis on the show.
"Tennis did help me mentally," he said. "When you play tennis, you look at the opponent when you're warming up with them and you look at their strengths and their weaknesses. And that's what I did on 'Survivor.' I tried to play with people's strengths and weaknesses and attack their weaknesses and take advantage of their strengths."
Rivera transferred to Ball State from Tennessee Tech University after his sophomore year. He spent two seasons on the Ball State tennis team after red-shirting his first year.
"He was rather undisciplined when he got here," Ball State men's tennis coach Bill Richards said.
Richards took a chance on him even though his grades were bad and his tennis game was in a downward spiral, Rivera said.
"He took me in and he was great," he said. "I feel like I owe a lot to him because he was part of making my life better."
Richards got him to go to class and improve his tennis game, Rivera said. He said he earned a 3.5 grade point average his first semester at Ball State, something he had not done in high school.
"Going from Puerto Rico, going to Ball State by myself, you learn to really take responsibility for your own actions and have a sense of discipline," he said. "I think me being by myself at Ball State and being part of the tennis team that was really successful and really organized and really structured, helped me lay out the plan that got me at least this far in the game."
Before the show began, Richards said he did not think Rivera would be able to control his temper because he could not when he played for the Cardinals.
"Coach knew me from before," Rivera said. "He guessed wrong. I'm not like that anymore. I am really competitive and I do get mad when I lose but I don't blow off steam at people anymore."
Rivera worked as an advertising executive in Miami before "Survivor." He said he was offered a promotion but had to quit his job to go on the show.
The support of his friends and family was important in his decision to go on the show, he said.
"If I was in the same situation I would have done the same thing," Rivera's father, Edgardo Rivera, said. "How many opportunities are there to go to a program like "Survivor" and network TV and all that? That's an opportunity, once in a lifetime."
Despite currently being unemployed, Rivera said he has been offered a job in Puerto Rico.
"I do have a job opportunity but I just wanted to soak in all the 'Survivor' experience and not have anything to worry about," he said. "I wanted to enjoy it and now that I did, it's back to work."
Though he is preparing to go back to work, he said he would go on "Survivor" again in a heartbeat.
"The best days of my life were the three years I was at Ball State," Rivera said. "I have to say that this 'Survivor' experience was parallel to my experience that I had at Ball State. I had a lot of fun at Ball State. I had a lot of fun being on 'Survivor.'"
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