Before The Bachelorette's last season wrapped up, some people thought second-runner-up Chase McNary could be the next Bachelor — including ABC, apparently. "I went through the negotiations, I accepted the offer, I signed the contract," McNary told Us Weekly . "I talked to my family friends about being the Bachelor. It was the Monday before they announced it that they told me I wasn’t the Bachelor. So I found out with the rest of the world that it was Nick." Chase wasn't the only one falsely led to believe he'd be the next Bachelor. Bachelorette runner-up Luke Pell said ABC went back on its promise that he'd have the starring role the morning he was supposed to fly to LA. "They said ABC had decided to quote-unquote go in a different direction," he told Us Pulling a last minute switch on contestants like this seems to be a habit of ABC's. E! News reported that Caila Quinn actually started filming a Bachelorette season, but it was cut short when JoJo Fletcher was chosen instead. And before Chris Soules's 2014 Bachelor season, Bachelorette runner-up Arie Luyendyk, Jr. was promised the role . "Maybe this is a common practice now to throw off fans — I don’t know," he told Us Weekly. That's a plausible theory. Or maybe the network likes to keep its options open, so it has as much time as possible to decide who to commit to and an alternative if the top choice backs out. It's like the casting equivalent of benching a love interest, and it sounds just as unpleasant for the person being led on.