In favor of the fence-jump! Ben Higgins understands why Colton Underwood nearly quit The Bachelor after his frontrunner, Cassie Randolph, broke up with him.
The speech pathologist, 23, self-eliminated during the Monday, March 4, episode after telling Underwood, 27, that she wasn’t in love with him. The pair had an emotional conversation about their future before Cassie explained that she wasn’t ready for an engagement, which caused the former NFL player to jump a high fence and leave the show’s set.
Higgins, 29, has concerns about how Cassie handled the split. “I think she should have did something different with Colton. It’s very clear that she was not into him,” the season 20 Bachelor told Entertainment Tonight on Wednesday, March 6.
He continued: “And so as much as she maybe felt the pressure to still be there and just still try to make this work — you know, you have a lot of people counting on you and watching — I think all she wanted to tell him was, ‘You’re a great guy, you’ve proven to be a great guy, but I’m just not that into you and as a result, I need to leave.’ But instead, it felt like she was kind of dancing around the subject, going, ‘This is too fast, this isn’t right for me, I just don’t know.’ She knew.”
The “Almost Famous” podcast host felt that Cassie should have been more direct with the Legacy Foundation owner. “If she would have just told Colton, ‘This isn’t going to work, like, we’re not meant for each other,’ then Colton just has to say goodbye,” Higgins explained. “He’s getting broken up with and he can’t beg and he can’t scream for more. So what Colton did is he just fought for her and I think that’s fair. He loves this woman. I don’t think she gave him the right explanation. She should have just left and said, ‘This isn’t going to work.’”
After watching everything unfold, Higgins doesn’t think it would be fair if Underwood continues to pursue his final two contestants, Tayshia Adams and Hannah Godwin. The athlete already had his fantasy suite overnight date with Tayshia, but has yet to see Hannah since the breakup with Cassie.
“He only wanted Cassie. I don’t know how at this point he looks around himself and goes, ‘Yeah, the other two women still have a chance.’ I don’t think it would be fair to them, especially after having to watch what just happened,” the Generous Coffee owner noted. “Especially with an engagement. That’s the part I don’t get is how are you supposed to get down on one knee when you’re still so much into one person up until a few days left.”
Underwood recently opened up to Us Weekly exclusively and revealed why he continued to stay on the show after Cassie dumped him. “You see that, obviously, the story goes on and the show goes on and think that I had a realization, ‘Life is not fair’ to myself,” he said.
Underwood continued, “And I had a very important conversation with Chris [Harrison] about that, ‘Where do we go from here?’ And then having a conversation with my family and my dad really helped me put things into perspective. It was like, ‘You owe this to yourself and you owe this to these women to really explore and see where to go from here.’”
The Bachelor airs on ABC Mondays at 8 p.m. ET.
