A small-town ASU student currently has a one-in-four shot at winning half a million dollars on the reality TV show Big Brother.
Queen Creek native Hayden Moss, a former ASU baseball player and exercise and wellness senior, has been competing on the show since he left his Tempe home on June 24, his mother, Renea Moss, said.
Thirteen cast members began the twelfth season of the show when they moved into a house that isolates them from the world and tapes their every move. The housemates vote to eliminate each other after a series of competitions and challenges each week. Hayden Moss has yet to be voted off and is one of the last four housemates left in the game.
Hayden Moss couldn’t be reached for comment because of his current involvement in the show, and the location of the house isn’t allowed to be released.
A CBS film crew came to Tempe with the intention of filming Hayden Moss and deciding if he’d fit in with the show’s plot. The producers ended up handing him a key to the Big Brother house and offered him a spot on the show, said friend Brendan Cunningham.
“He was shocked,” Cunningham said. “It was actually really funny because he hadn’t thought that he was going to get handed a key that day. They just told him that they were just coming to film it, or it was just another round of cuts. We were at his house and he got the key and he was just astonished.”
Hayden Moss was taken away to test his odds at half a million dollars only two hours after receiving the offer, Cunningham said.
This opportunity could not have come at a better time, Renea Moss said. He had just recovered from a career-ending leg injury from baseball, but this opportunity allowed him to start a new chapter in his life, she said.
“It is what it is,” Renea Moss said. “To have something that he worked so hard for, since he was little, taken away from him, but to be handed an opportunity like this, it’s so awesome.”
Hayden Moss joined the ASU baseball team after a walk-on try-out during the 2008 season. He was later advised by an ASU coach to play at a junior college to get more playing time. In 2009, he transferred to junior college in Texas, where he suffered from a major leg injury. After realizing his baseball career was over, Hayden Moss returned to ASU to finish his degree, Renea Moss said.
Hayden Moss is only three credit hours short of his degree. His involvement in the show has postponed his progress, but he plans to return to ASU to finish his degree, said Renea Moss and Cunningham.
Cunningham was the student-manager of the baseball team at ASU when he met Hayden Moss, and is now a full-time employee with baseball operations. He and Moss have remained friends since they met, Cunningham said.
During his season with the Sun Devils, Hayden Moss became close with several of his teammates, including finance senior Andy Workman.
A group of Moss’ teammates watch the show together, Workman said.
“It was weird at first because we get to see his every move, which you really don’t in person because there’s not a camera on him 24/7, but on this show, you get to see his every move and everything he does,” Workman said. “It was kind of weird at first, but you get used to it.”
The show’s season finale is Sept. 15. During the finale, the seven most recent cast-offs make up the “jury” and vote between the final two competitors in the game to determine who wins $500,000. The runner-up receives $50,000, and every other competitor is paid $750 for every week they stay on the show, Renea Moss said.
Throughout the show, Hayden Moss has had a lot of support from his friends and family. As the show approaches the finale, everyone is really pulling for him to win, Cunningham said.
“I really think he’s got a good shot of winning it,” he said.
No matter the outcome, Hayden Moss’ friends and family are proud of how he represented himself and ASU on the show, Cunningham said.
“He’s just such a nice guy,” he said. “He has such a big heart and I feel like he’s going about [the game] in the right way. He’s not stabbing anyone in the back; he’s not acting like an idiot. I’m real proud of him.”
Reach the reporter at cottens@asu.edu
