Amazing Race: Did Josh and Brent deserve to win?

I'm going to deviate from my usual posting that deal with sports related thoughts and talk about the Amazing Race finally that occur Sunday. Josh/Brent, Goat Farmers from New York won the million dollar prize for finishing first ahead of the Chippendale's and Trey/Lexi.

Many people are already asking if they deserved to win since they had not won any legs prior to the final and spent most of the race in the back of the pack. My answer is yes, they are deserving winners.... They came in first in the final leg, that makes them deserving winners. It does not matter how you get there as long as you play by the rules.

This is no different than in NASCAR when a driver wins on the final lap without leading any other laps? Do you hear the announcer say "He really did not win since he only led the last lap. In football, if the other team scores with no time left and that was the only time they led, do they not deserve to win? It does not matter how you got there, just that you got there. Josh and Brent did what they needed to do to win the race and that is all.

Someone said once "When you see a bear, you do not need to the be the fastest person, you just need to outrun the slowest person". Josh and Brent employed this motto on the race, a technique that rarely works. I said rarely works, not never works. They were able to come in second to last six times (if I did my math correct) in the race.

If the Chippendale's or Trey/Lexi would have won, people would have said they wanted someone other than Mactor's (Model-Actors) winning the race. Two normal people won the race and people are all up in arms, I get the feeling that people want nobody to the win the race, that way there are no complains.

I have watched all 21 seasons of the Amazing Race and I think what separates the teams that win the race now verses the teams that won in the early seasons where the number of countries visited, number of days spent in one country, number of tasks and the number of miles traveled. Teams in the early seasons had to do more to win and I think people can not get over the fact that teams do less to win the top prize. People also got a warped sense of what real teams were when more stars were added to the show starting with Rob and Amber in Season 7. Prior to that season, all the teams were normal people like Josh and Brent, back then people did not complain a peep.

The glory days have pasted for the Amazing Race, the reality show era in prime time television is just about over. Television stations are not doling out as  much to reality shows as when the Amazing Race first started, but the Amazing Race has survived in the Sunday night slot. We now spend more days in large countries to account for that, but the Amazing Race has some years left and I look forward to watching them all. This show needs more Josh/Brent type of players, the normal common person, that is how the show got started and that is who they should rely on for the future seasons.

Josh/Brent.... Deserving winners?  In my mind.... YES! They came in first, they deserved the million.