Survivor Spoiler

Rumors circulating on the Internet suggest that the tribes for Survivor Cook Islands will be separated in an entirely different and somewhat controversial way. (Warning: Potential spoilers ahead about the game’s structure, but not about results.)

There have been persistent rumors, supported by photographs of challenges, that there will be four tribes at the start of the game. However, those won’t necessarily be dissolved immediately: instead, they’ll be split in brand-new way, “divided up into 4 groups by race, 5 white, 5 black, 5 hispanic, and 5 asian,” according to a rumor sent to both SurvivorFever.net and the True Dork Times.

At the end of last season, Jeff Probst said, “we’re hoping to do something that we’ve never done before in a huge way,” and the tribe split may allude to that. Of course, this isn’t really that different from last season, when the show separated tribes by sex and age for Survivor Panama. Splitting them by race may seem to be more controversial, but really is a no less arbitrary distinction than sex or age.

With the show debuting Sept. 14, the cast should be revealed on The Early Show sooner than later, and with that, we’ll probably have confirmation about this rumor’s validity.