All year, the nation has been focused on three people from Utah. And we're not talking about politicians.

We include Marie in the group because she held out longer than many people expected on "Dancing with the Stars," overcoming physical barriers and a death in the family to finish a respectable third. At 48 she was the oldest person ever to make it to the finals.

Of course, the shows have nothing to do with reality and everything to do with entertainment, which may be why Herzog and Hough triumphed and Marie stayed in the running until the bitter end.

So what's next for the dancers? Hough is said to be cutting a country music album. Any Utah woman who can steer a race car driver around and make him look good should have no problem conquering Nashville. Marie? We still love her.

But Herzog takes the cake. News reports say he held his own "Survivor" parties, complete with tiki torches. Turning Pleasant Grove into a Pacific isle for a few nights eventually paid off for him, and for Utah. We're now known more as the Survivor State than the Beehive State.

So why not exploit it further? Have contestants trudge across Utah, looking for water and shelter. Forget voting people off the show; the winner of Utah Survivor would be the last one standing.

You could challenge contestants with tougher tests that really risk their lives, or their sanity -- for example, commuting on Interstate 15 daily. Or they could spend a day jogging outdoors and inhaling deeply during a winter inversion in Utah Valley when the air quality index is over 100.

Even tougher, the show could be held in Orem, where contestants could let their lawns get brown. If they can survive the onslaught by the local gendarmes, they'd deserve to win a million. And they'd probably need it for bail money and lawyers' fees.

Herzog, a self-described openly gay Mormon, could parlay his new notoriety into a TV sitcom. If they can do it with polygamists, as in "Big Love," they can do it with anything. He could play an openly gay Mormon presidential candidate, which would smash stereotypes faster than you can say Mitt Romney.

Come to think of it, Herzog might make a good real-life politician. To win "Survivor" he needed to be personable yet able to manipulate others. That earned him a description as a "slippery little sucker."

He himself said, in his final plea for the prize money, "I know that I played a game where I had to lie and I had to backstab and I had to hurt people that I cared about."

With an attitude like that, he can start printing the "Herzog for President" signs right now.