After a troubled year for “The Bachelor” franchise, the ABC reality dating show is going back to a familiar well: the NFL. The network announced Friday that Sam Hartman, a quarterback for the Washington Commanders, will be handing out roses on the 30th season of the show. Season 30 will premiere March 21, the network said in a statement. Hartman, 27, is a member of the Commanders’ practice squad and has yet to play a regular-season game. He appeared Friday on “Good Morning America,” shortly after the Commanders’ win over the New York Giants on Thursday night. “I have a tough time holding conversation with one girl; 30 is going to be pretty tough,” he joked to the hosts. He said his first reaction to the overture was “no way” — but a conversation with the show’s host, Jesse Palmer, changed his mind. Palmer himself is a former lead on “The Bachelor” — and was a quarterback for the Giants when he appeared on the show’s fifth season. Colton Underwood and Clayton Echard — both contestants on “The Bachelorette” who later became leads of “The Bachelor” — also had brief NFL careers. Underwood was on practice squads while Echard went to a training camp. Mel Owens, the titular “Golden Bachelor” for Season 2 of the spinoff, was a linebacker for the Los Angeles Rams. Hartman’s selection again breaks with the typical formula of casting past contestants on “The Bachelorette” and “The Bachelor” as leads. The network tried that last year when it selected “Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” star Taylor Frankie Paul for “The Bachelorette,” but the experiment ended with that season being scrubbed entirely in March amid domestic abuse allegations. No show in the “Bachelor” universe has aired since summer 2025’s “Bachelor in Paradise,” a remarkable hiatus for a franchise that’s been a near-constant in the world of reality TV since 2002. Hartman, a Charlotte, North Carolina, native who played college football at Wake Forest and Notre Dame, said he was nervous. He told the “Good Morning America” hosts his criteria for his would-be fiancee included someone he could chase — “chase in the way they have a drive for something that motivates me to wake up every day and chase them” — and “compassion and some type of caregiving,” citing his family history in the medical field. “They gotta be ready to bring their competitive spirit,” he said. ___ Andrew Gillis And Mallika Sen, The Associated Press
