About the cast...
I, for one, think that the casting of 5 Season 14 teams is not at all a bad idea. It was a very entertaining season with many power teams and had the most physical tasks by far, compared to any other recent season. There is a reason why that was the last season to win an Emmy…The teams chosen, however, are a little surprising. Yes, Luke had a large following, but he also annoyed a lot of people. That's probably why they cast Kisha/Jen (shoving) and Mike/Mel, ("sinister deaf kid") and most importantly Kris/Amanda (blind u-turn) back...
And to offset the Anti-Luke league they cast the red heads back. At least they again have someone to hang on to and follow to the end, if Margie is still as competitive...
Mike and Mel had a large following and CBS lost over 1.39 million viewers (TAR 14 on Wikipedia) when they were eliminated. = logical choice...
The show also lost 450,000 viewers when Christie and Jodi were eliminated! Their last episode had the largest number of viewers, except for the Finale. Interesting that no one has mentioned them. They were a smart and very competitive team who won a leg because of a smart flight decision and then had the bad luck that all the teams had to wait for one train departure time and then had 2 consecutive days of bad directions by a local and a taxi driver who took them an hour out of the way. Christie has to be very disappointed to see the other S14 teams chosen back, but it doesn't help when you have a teammate who now works in casting and hangs out with all the CBS reality people every weekend... (see Facebook) They also seem to not be that good of friends, so a re-race might have had some entertaining moments…
Flight Time and Big Easy were entertaining and very competitive physically, as long as there aren't many "think" tasks... Same goes for Kisha and Jen. Kynt and Vyxen ARE the Amazing Race. They are at every function and fundraiser and live for that show, so a good choice as well.
Ron and Christina I am not crazy about. The dad came around during their season and I think they might ba a little boring this coming season. I would have preferred some other team instead.
Mallory is entertaining, so good choice, along with her smart dad. Funny, how the new race started a week after they got eliminated from TAR17.
The cowboys were definitely a fan favorite and deserve to be there. I don’t think they will have it as easy as in their (pretty lame) season.
Zev and Justin were too boring for my taste; I would have rather seen Steve and Linda...
Speaking of… As you can tell from their Facebook updates, or lack thereof, Steve and Linda, Mike and Mark, and Brad and Victoria were all cast as alternates… that leaves only Victor and Tammy as the winners, Preston and Jennifer, and the above mentioned Christie and Jodi out of the cast… I would have loved to see a TAR14 V2.0 to see how much luck and skill is really involved.