UGA’s own Herschel Walker got the boot by the Donald Sunday night but the Trump Man did it with a heavy heart.

“I am not a gay man and I love you,” Trump said. “Herschel, you’re fired.”

Somehow, country star Clint Black keeps surviving despite his argumentative ways and not-so-competent work thus far.

Walker, who runs a chicken company, decided to be the project manager for the second challenge of the night in which Schwan’s home delivery frozen foods wanted a new meal. Walker honed in on chicken, though he revealed an odd fact. He doesn’t actually eat chicken. Odd.

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Anyway, Black chose his wife’s ginger soy chicken recipe but it was way too salty so Joan Rivers saved it by adding orange flavor. But then Walker made his ultimately fatal mistake: he wanted to do a parfait. Black had concerns about the yogurt freezing and thawing properly. Walker got annoyed with him (”You argue about everything!” Walker said to Black.) and chose to keep doing the parfait. The company execs did like the chicken but found the dessert too complicated to pack.

The opponents, led by Jesse James, won with a gluten-free pasta and meatballs, courtesy of poker player Annie Duke. He acted a bit odd, doing most of the (minimalistic) marketing himself, minus Melissa, but it didn’t matter in the end. A win’s a win.

Overall, the Heisman Trophy winner comported himself like a champ. He occasionally lashed out at the likes of Black and earlier, Tom Green, but he played the game with class 99% of the time. Joan Rivers at one point even said she wished Melissa and Herschel would hook up, she liked him so much. Now — that would be one strange couple, eh?

He did lose twice, though, as project manager, so his charity Alternative Community Development Services, got nothing.

In the earlier challenge, Trump fired golfer Natalie Gulbes for an auction of Ivanka Trump’s jewelry. Her errors: not pulling in her buds to give money and picking jewelry that wasn’t showy enough for a live auction.

But what made that first hour fascinating was the interplay among Joan Rivers, Melissa Rivers and Annie Duke.

To Annie’s credit, she did a brilliant job as an auctioneer shaking money down from her friends salted in the audience. (My girlfriend dubbed her a “nutcracker.”)

“She really knows how to take money from people,” Brande Roderick said admirably.

Team Kotu’s Black had a lot more trouble wrangling money. He couldn’t get people into it the way Duke did. Why wasn’t Joan Rivers doing it in the first place? The room was leaden. Nobody was spending.

“Utterly embarrassing,” said season one “Celebrity Apprentice” winner Piers Morgan, who was a guest observer.

Rivers finally came out during the big item to help poor Black. She helped them sell jewelry.

During the Trump panel discussion, “I like my team to all participate,” Joan said, rationalizing why Clint led the auction instead of her. Natalie’s pieces didn’t stand out from the back.

Ivanka was insulted that Joan Rivers’ strategy was to get the most money, by pooling the donor money for one item. In fact, they didn’t even sell all five pieces of jewelry.

Trump and Morgan wondered why Joan Rivers’ couldn’t get many big names. Melissa started defending her mom, noting that many big names turned him down.

Annie Duke criticized the strategy and Rivers did not take it well.

“You’re a despicable human being, a perfect poker player,” Joan Rivers said.

“She’s a crazy bitch and she better never talk to me again,” Duke said with venom later on.

In the end, Duke totally beat up on Rivers as team leaders, $153,000 to $92,000. So she got $245,000 for her charity Refugees International.

Previews show more fireworks between the two next week.

(Ratings for this episode was about 8.3 million people, according to early estimates out Monday afternoon. That’s higher than normal for a show that has tended to draw between 7 and 8 million viewers in recent weeks.)