Was Jesse Palmer ever on ‘The Bachelor’ or has he only ever been a host?

Jesse Palmer‘s been a staple of The Bachelor for a good few years now, but the captivating reality show is far from his only claim to fame. Long before he was known as the chiseled and charming host of the fan-favorite reality show, he was turning heads in another high-profile career.

Before he ever entered the reality sphere, Palmer enjoyed a brief but successful stint as a pro footballer. He joined the NFL back in 2001, and enjoyed several seasons with the New York Giants as the team’s largely backup quarterback. He still played in several games — even starting a few — before he was dropped from the Giants and team-hopped for several years before making the transition from pro sports to broadcast.

That same energetic charisma that makes Palmer such a good Bachelor host likewise made him an excellent game analyst for several sports-centric networks. He dug his heels into his new television career in the mid-2000s, and by the 2010s and 2020s he was a broadly-known name with a solid library of previous appearances behind him. Among the biggest — despite his frequent presence on football programs — is inarguably The Bachelor, a show he’s served as host of for several seasons now. But is that where his connection with the reality franchise began, or do their roots go back even further?

Was Jesse Palmer ever a contestant on The Bachelor?

Jesse Palmer’s Bachlor origins stretch much farther back than his first hosting stint in 2021. He was first tapped for a position on the show way back in 2004, and the show wasn’t looking for a host — it was looking for a contestant.

That’s right — long before he was presenting new Bachelors and Bachelorettes to the world, Palmer was a Bachelor himself. He was tapped to appear as the Bachelor in the show’s fifth season, serving — at that point, at least — as the first Canadian, first professional athlete, and youngest-ever participant to appear on the series.

Palmer’s stint as Bachelor saw him hit a few snags — including calling the wrong name at his first-ever rose ceremony — but, in the end, it also saw him select the young Jessica Bowlin as his match. Following the season, the pair only made it a few months into their post-show courtship before cutting things off, but his time on the show was clearly impactful for Palmer.

He would return to the world of The Bachelor in 2022, when he served as host of three separate iterations of the show. He hosted season 26 of The Bachelor, season 19 of The Bachelorette, and season 8 of Bachelor in Paradise, all in 2022, and did such a good job he was asked back. Palmer now serves as permanent host of The Bachelor franchise — which includes a library of releases including the big two, Bachelor in Paradise, and the new Golden Bachelor, bringing that first-hand experience to task for the job.