In a tight 4-3 jury vote seen during last night's live finale of CBS's Big Brother 5, Drew Daniel, a 22-year-old single recent college graduate from Urbana, Ohio, defeated Michael Ellis (aka "Cowboy"), a 23-year-old security officer from Durant, Oklahoma, to win the reality show's $500,000 grand prize. As the program's runner-up, Cowboy will receive $50,000.
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Along with Jase Wirey and Scott Long, Drew and Cowboy were members of "The Four Horsemen" alliance that formed during the initial days of the summer-long program. While the group appeared to be in firm control of the game early on, their alliance soon crumbled due to the some poor gameplay, the rise of internal jealousies and the surprise introduction of an additional non-horseman contestant.
Looking to free his alliance from increasing tensions that were being caused by Jase and Scott's ongoing competition for the affection of fellow contestant Holly King, Drew nominated Holly for eviction during his reign as the program's third Head of Household. His plan to evict Holly worked (she was ousted in a 7-1 vote) however the heavy-handed machinations of the group (which still numbered a minority in the house) did not go unnoticed by the other houseguests, and as a result, as soon as someone other than a horseman or Marvin Latimer (a non-horseman who also believed that he was allied with the foursome) won the coveted Head of Household position, the remaining houseguests joined together to vote out Scott. After Scott's eviction things only got worse for the remaining horsemen, with the houseguests all discovering that one of the non-horseman contestants, a woman presented to them as Adria Okins, was actually a set of identical twins named Adria Klein and Natalie Carroll that had been previously competing as one contestant but would now compete in the game individually.
While the introduction of the program's "Twin Twist" would eventually be responsible for the destruction of the alliance that existed among the non-horsemen contestants and result in Drew and Cowboy's ability to reach Big Brother's finals, its announcement didn't stop the group from succeeding at the task immediately at hand -- evicting Jase. The victim of fifth Head of Household Jennifer Dedmon's (aka Nakomis) elaborate "Six Finger Plan" which prevented him from competing for the week's Power Of Veto by nominating two members of her own six-person alliance, Jase was evicted in a 6-1 vote. However with Jase and Scott now gone, Adria and Natalie quickly emerged as a bigger and more dominant force than the remaining two horsemen, setting off a cannibalistic string of evictions that fragmented the non-horsemen alliance and paved the way for Drew and Cowboy's eventual run to the finals.
During the finale's live jury voting, Drew received votes from Marvin, Will Wikle, Karen O’Neil-Ganci, and Diane Henry, the "house girlfriend" that Drew betrayed when, as Big Brother's twelfth and final Head of Household, he opted to eviction her and instead take Cowboy to the finals with him. Cowboy received votes from Adria, Natalie, and Nakomis.