Rethinking Barstool?

[deanx0]

It's pretty clear to anyone that listens to PMT, that while it is under the Barstool umbrella, it does not follow the Barstool style almost at all. Because of this stylistic shift and the clear talent and chemistry of Big Cat and PMT Commenter (and even Hank), the podcast has taken off and become a bit of a sensation--look at the people willing to go on the show.

Here's where my theory starts--Portnoy does not like that PMT is bigger than anything he's done, and I think he tries to reign them in when he can. The Comedy Central 4-show experiment would have been more successful if it had been PMT branded or at least have more PMT content. Instead Portnoy puts himself front and center and the show is not renewed, going out with a fizzle.

ESPN wants the PMT content and fans, and the show is going forward, but Portnoy again tries to make it more about him and his brand--hence the name change to play up Barstool and play down PMT. PFT Commenter immediately saw this what it was for, and did not agree, but politically said it should be PMT named for branding reasons. Big Cat, a loyal guy (look how much he lauded Rappaport''s loyalty on Friday's episode) went along with Portnoy, but listening today, it's pretty evident how he really felt about this.

I love PMT, and I think these guys are incredibly talented, but if they want to take the next step, unfortunately it will take a Barstool divorce. If Portnoy doesn't step in with the name change and the pissing match with Ponder, we would have seen episode 2 last night. I hope Big Cat can eventually pull the trigger, but I understand if he sticks with Barstool.

 

[The Gray Eagle]

PFT Commenter is the funniest sports personality going and is hilarious. On some level it makes some sense that he is at Barstool, since the morons he is parodying are right there on that site. But he deserves way better. Barstool is a terrible site for terrible people. Hopefully PFT will get hired away soon and go to a site that isn't filled with racist d-bags.

 

[Rusty13]

If Portnoy doesn't step in with the name change and the pissing match with Ponder, we would have seen episode 2 last night.

I'm not sure it would have mattered. PFT even said so on Twitter today. I think Ponder had this on her radar way before the unveiling of the show's title.

 

[Tyrone Biggums]

Well based on twitter, the internal stuff was led by Sam Ponder.

Heard it was Ponder Lebetard and Bomani as the people who were 100% against it. But mostly Ponder. No clue if Spain was against it but I would assume so.

 

[jcd0805]

Heard it was Ponder Lebetard and Bomani as the people who were 100% against it. But mostly Ponder. No clue if Spain was against it but I would assume so.

Bomani surprises me, he has PFT on his show a lot.

 

[JCizzle]

PFT Commenter is the funniest sports personality going and is hilarious. On some level it makes some sense that he is at Barstool, since the morons he is parodying are right there on that site. But he deserves way better. Barstool is a terrible site for terrible people. Hopefully PFT will get hired away soon and go to a site that isn't filled with racist d-bags.

I dunno, I think that used to be a universal statement, but they have a lot of good stuff now. Carrabis and Starting 9 is really entertaining in my opinion. Chaps is one of the funniest, good natured people on the planet. McAfee is hilarious at times (his good/bad for the brand punter breakdowns are incredibly funny). It's not a dumpster fire anymore, which is what I expected when PMT served as my introduction to the site at large.

That said, there's certainly a lot of frat type content as well.

 

[Tyrone Biggums]

Bomani surprises me, he has PFT on his show a lot.

Again there’s a lot of rumors out there. He surprised me as well so maybe that inclusion is pure BS. But I know Pres came out today and said Spain and Ponder. LeBetard was on his show yesterday and said he opposes barstool and wanted more programming for the liberal audience. Which is fine but not on the regular station. Please one station that sticks to sports.

 

[jcd0805]

Big Cat and PFT went to visit Billy Football to take their minds of being cancelled, these two are absolute gold

 

[zoolight.space]

How about letting us all in on the secret of your past identity. I like to know who I'm blocking.

My identity is not secret. My screenname is the website for my podcast as well as the name of my podcast.

My name remains Derek Maine.

I was really, sincerely, trying to be funny. Obviously it failed. I feel shitty about that. Today on a long drive to work I listened to the latest PMT and enjoyed it very much. I also really liked Rapaport's takedown of ESPN.

I feel like for many years here I, and other posters, were able to bust chops and be sardonic and silly and it was part of the culture and sort of appreciated. That's the site I came up on and the posting style I always took on and appreciated in others. Perhaps I've gotten really, really shitty at it or the tenor of the site has changed and I have not adapted (which is also shitty on my part) or maybe I was never entertaining to anyone as a poster or person and I was just fooling myself for years. I don't know. But the quick trigger to just block me for absurdist humor mixed with legitimate opinions and a clear delineation between the two does not make sense to me.

 

[zoolight.space]

As for PMT, these guys are new media stars creating original content and ESPN is a dinosaur. Short-term, yeah it sucks but PMT will be continue to gain relevance, fans and success and whatever platform they are on is just ancillary at this point. That's the deal with new media, the platforms are not as powerful as they once were. Once you build an audience you can do it in multiple formats in multiple places.

The Ringer's recent NBApalooza was basically what Grantland Basketball's show tried to be except now The Ringer can do it completely on their own and their viewers will follow them.

 

[Average Reds]

My identity is not secret. My screenname is the website for my podcast as well as the name of my podcast.

My name remains Derek Maine.

I was really, sincerely, trying to be funny. Obviously it failed. I feel shitty about that. Today on a long drive to work I listened to the latest PMT and enjoyed it very much. I also really liked Rapaport's takedown of ESPN.

I feel like for many years here I, and other posters, were able to bust chops and be sardonic and silly and it was part of the culture and sort of appreciated. That's the site I came up on and the posting style I always took on and appreciated in others. Perhaps I've gotten really, really shitty at it or the tenor of the site has changed and I have not adapted (which is also shitty on my part) or maybe I was never entertaining to anyone as a poster or person and I was just fooling myself for years. I don't know. But the quick trigger to just block me for absurdist humor mixed with legitimate opinions and a clear delineation between the two does not make sense to me.

Going to play this straight, because I want to be as clear as possible. With that said, I have two comments:

First, those of us who are (relatively speaking) long-time members have a pretty good handle on the posting history of other long-timers. Simply put, this familiarity makes it easier for us to place the comments of that poster into context.

This dynamic can be thrown off-kilter when a member leaves/is banned and then comes back under a new name. This is especially true when the member in question does not alter his/her posting style to reflect the fact that they are now seen to others as a "new" member. In that case, we can all tell from the content/confidence/tone of the poster that they've been around, but we can't place them because the name is unfamiliar and the poster in question (you, for example) has 197 posts to his/her credit over a two month period.

Derek, I never had any major issues with you before. Indeed, I enjoyed your contributions and especially your sense of humor. But your sense of humor can have an edge at times - sometimes laconic, other times sardonic - but because it was you, we rolled with it. (Well, for the most part. ) This new character "zoolight" is unknown to us, and so you have to take into account the fact that the context built up over more than a decade is missing. At least it was for me.

Second, I want to point out that the line "I like to know who I'm blocking" was meant to be (wait for it) humorous. Apologies if it came across as mean-spirited.

In any case, glad to have you back.

 

[zoolight.space]

Totally fair and appreciate the comments. The real humor is me being terrible at recognizing it in others while demanding everyone else recognize it in me.

Glad to be back

 

[ifmanis5]

This is big for Stool- a long write up in the NY Times Magazine: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/14/magazine/spurned-by-espn-barstool-sports-is-staying-on-offense.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

The insurgent media company has built a devoted following of what it sees as “average” sports fans: unruly, occasionally toxic and aggressively male.

 

[ForKeeps]

Boy that's a nice way of putting it, I wonder if that was written by a dude?

 

[Nator]

Julian Edelman is today's guest on Pardon my Take.

I haven't had a chance to listen yet, but this should be interesting.

 

[DeJesus Built My Hotrod]

Boy that's a nice way of putting it, I wonder if that was written by a dude?

It was however I will add that I think the author did a good job in writing a balanced piece.

 

[allstonite]

Julian Edelman is today's guest on Pardon my Take.

I haven't had a chance to listen yet, but this should be interesting.

He was good although I always thought his bro act was more of a schtick and he played it up. It definitely is not

 

[jasail]

This is big for Stool- a long write up in the NY Times Magazine: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/14/magazine/spurned-by-espn-barstool-sports-is-staying-on-offense.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

I thought the article was fair compared to most of the sensationalist drivel I read about the website. The author got a lot of things right about the content, readership and evolution. The comment about Portnoy and Zuck was incredible. There were some swings and misses, but for me it was just from a difference in perspective. My one complaint about the content was that the author tried too hard to jam BSS into a shallow political narrative. BSS gets lumped into the "alt-right" in the same way that Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro and Dave Rubin do, and labeling it as such is either intellectually dishonest or lazy.

 

[jasail]

Dan Greenberg is their main NBA writer right now. He does a nightly recap of what's going on in the NBA and write-up on the C's. IMO, this is some of the best (if not the best) pure sports content on the site. A couple of examples:

https://www.barstoolsports.com/boston/and-just-like-that-the-celtics-got-back-to-winning-not-done
https://www.barstoolsports.com/boston/buying-or-selling-in-the-nbas-first-month

 

[jsinger121]

Barstool is considering hiring Craig Carton.

http://www.nydailynews.com/amp/sports/barstool-sports-talking-craig-carton-hiring-article-1.3710923?__twitter_impression=true

 

[RedOctober3829]

Ryen Russillo is leaving ESPN after Friday's show and there are rumors he may be joining Barstool Radio.

 

[jsinger121]

Ryen Russillo is leaving ESPN after Friday's show and there are rumors he may be joining Barstool Radio.

Would be a huge kick in the nuts to ESPN

 

[kelpapa]

Ryen Russillo is leaving ESPN after Friday's show and there are rumors he may be joining Barstool Radio.

Last year, as the layoffs were going down, Russillo took off a week to go house hunting in LA. When he came back, he said he thought he was getting the axe that week, so he figured he would take PTO to go look for houses there.

He's been looking to do the tv thing for a while. I haven't listened to the show much since since they got rid of Kanell (not because I liked Kanell; life just got in the way), but he was always my favorite personality on ESPN. I doubt he'd go to Barstool, though. I know they are buddies, but it doesn't seem to be what he's looking to do.

 

[InstaFace]

Are we including the Pat McAfee show here? Cause this is great stuff.

 

[Average Reds]

Barstool is considering hiring Craig Carton.

http://www.nydailynews.com/amp/sports/barstool-sports-talking-craig-carton-hiring-article-1.3710923?__twitter_impression=true

I don’t know much, if anything, about Barstool, but based on their comments about Carton, it’s pretty clear that their M.O. is, at minimum, incredibly disingenuous.

 

[jasail]

I don’t know much, if anything, about Barstool, but based on their comments about Carton, it’s pretty clear that their M.O. is, at minimum, incredibly disingenuous.

Perhaps I'm not correctly understanding your point, but I'm not sure disingenuous is the right choice of words. Portnoy has been pretty forthright about his ambitions. He has said time and again that he wants to be the Lorne Michaels of the internet. His vision for BSS is to build a huge talent pool of sports/pop culture/humor writers and personalities who appeal to young men. He has always put talent and ability to put "asses in seats" above personalty, politics or personal history.

It's more than fair to criticize the hiring of Carton for a number of reasons and I expect if they do some of their sponsors (e.g., seat geek) may take issue with it. However, I don't think being disingenuous is a fair criticism. Hiring Carton would be right in line with this long-standing operating mode.

 

[ifmanis5]

KFC caught cheating on his pregnant wife: https://pagesix.com/2018/01/05/barstool-sports-fixtures-wife-catches-him-cheating/?_ga=2.40471713.248773729.1515074897-736198482.1333420995

 

[allstonite]

What a scumbag. I've never been a fan of his but always thought he was probably a decent family man under his tired act. I guess not

 

[Riconway3155]

Someone just tweeted "Saturday's are for the supervised visitations" at him and I just burst out laughing.

 

[Bunt4aTriple]

I read through the replies and someone said something along the lines of "didn't you learn from Portnoy?" Did he have a similar episode?

Edit: ah, didn't realize he was divorced/separated and got cheated on by the new girl.

 

[Average Reds]

Perhaps I'm not correctly understanding your point, but I'm not sure disingenuous is the right choice of words. Portnoy has been pretty forthright about his ambitions. He has said time and again that he wants to be the Lorne Michaels of the internet. His vision for BSS is to build a huge talent pool of sports/pop culture/humor writers and personalities who appeal to young men. He has always put talent and ability to put "asses in seats" above personalty, politics or peuous: rsonal history.

It's more than fair to criticize the hiring of Carton for a number of reasons and I expect if they do some of their sponsors (e.g., seat geek) may take issue with it. However, I don't think being disingenuous is a fair criticism. Hiring Carton would be right in line with this long-standing operating mode.

Disingenuous: not candid or sincere, typically by pretending that one knows less about something than one really does.

“The fact that he’s in trouble with the law does not scare me,” Portnoy said. “People make mistakes. But if he went to jail, he obviously wouldn’t be able to work with us. But that’s something that doesn’t particularly bother me.”

Here's what we know: Carton partnered with Joseph Meli - a known operator of ponzi schemes and fraudulent ticket reselling businesses who has pleaded guilty - to create a separate fraudulent ticket reselling operation. Carton stole millions from friends and associates so he could cover his gambling losses. The fact that he has not yet been convicted does not change what we know.

IMO, characterizing the accusations against Carton as being "in trouble with the law" or using the passive voice to refer to his actions as a "mistake" is pretty much the definition of disingenuous. YMMV.

 

[jsinger121]

KFC caught cheating on his pregnant wife: https://pagesix.com/2018/01/05/barstool-sports-fixtures-wife-catches-him-cheating/?_ga=2.40471713.248773729.1515074897-736198482.1333420995

It sucks he cheated on his wife since she is good looking. However is this even a mainstream media story a year ago? Just shows you how far Barstool has come in a year where if this happened last year do the Post or other outlets even care to pick up on it?

 

[PC Drunken Friar]

It sucks he cheated on his wife since she is good looking. However is this even a mainstream media story a year ago? Just shows you how far Barstool has come in a year where if this happened last year do the Post or other outlets even care to pick up on it?

It would have been better if his wife wasn't considered attractive?

 

[Papelbon's Poutine]

It would have been better if his wife wasn't considered attractive?

Clearly it’s ok to cheat on your pregnant wife if she’s not attractive. I think it’s in the Bible.

 

[jsinger121]

Clearly it’s ok to cheat on your pregnant wife if she’s not attractive. I think it’s in the Bible.

Thou shall cheat on your wife if she's not hot. 11th commandment

 

[ifmanis5]

KFC gives a video statement: http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/barstool-sports-blogger-kevin-clancy-admits-cheating-wife-article-1.3741922

“I have ruined my marriage, my family, and my life because I acted selfishly, I acted like a coward and I behaved like a boy when I should’ve behaved like a man,” he said.

 

[The Needler]

Weird world where a bunch of guys on a sports message board think that espn should not be reporting on what a pro basketball player's father has to say about the abilities of his son's coach, but a sports blogger (vlogger? Podcaster?) cheating on his wife is big news.

 

[PC Drunken Friar]

6 posts in 3+ days does not equate to big news.

 

[John Marzano Olympic Hero]

Weird world where a bunch of guys on a sports message board think that espn should not be reporting on what a pro basketball player's father has to say about the abilities of his son's coach, but a sports blogger (vlogger? Podcaster?) cheating on his wife is big news.

I think Alanis Morissette should update her song!

 

[joe dokes]

I think Alanis Morissette should update her song!

"'cause I've got one hand in his pocket"?

 

[John Marzano Olympic Hero]

"'cause I've got one hand in his pocket"?

It works for them all!

 

[shaggydog2000]

It works for them all!

You oughta know.

 

[RedOctober3829]

Barstool Radio premiers tomorrow on Sirius channel 85. Francesa is on their first show from 7-9 am. Here’s the daily lineup for now.
7-9 am—Julie Stewart-Binks, Willie Colon, Francis
10-12–Pat McAfee Show
12-1–Heartland Radio
1-2–Chicks in the Office
4-6–Barstool Radio: Portnoy, KFC, Liz Gonzalez
6-7–Evening Yak—Big Cat, Adam Ferrone, Jared Carrabis

 

[TFP]

Barstool Radio premiers tomorrow on Sirius channel 85. Francesa is on their first show from 7-9 am. Here’s the daily lineup for now.
7-9 am—Julie Stewart-Binks, Willie Colon, Francis
10-12–Pat McAfee Show
12-1–Heartland Radio
1-2–Chicks in the Office
4-6–Barstool Radio: Portnoy, KFC, Liz Gonzalez
6-7–Evening Yak—Big Cat, Adam Ferrone, Jared Carrabis

Gave it a quick listen this morning. Rough around the edges production wise but Willie Colon and JSB are great. Really surprised at their chemistry and ease at this on their first day together.

Francesca was a great guest to end their show and was extremely supportive and open and like his typical self. Not a bad start.

 

[jcd0805]

Barstool Radio premiers tomorrow on Sirius channel 85. Francesa is on their first show from 7-9 am. Here’s the daily lineup for now.
7-9 am—Julie Stewart-Binks, Willie Colon, Francis
10-12–Pat McAfee Show
12-1–Heartland Radio
1-2–Chicks in the Office
4-6–Barstool Radio: Portnoy, KFC, Liz Gonzalez
6-7–Evening Yak—Big Cat, Adam Ferrone, Jared Carrabis

Very excited to have Big Cat on the drive home every day!

 

[TFP]

I do think it’s interesting/cool/against type that they have 4 females on the air, 2 in an all women show and the other 2 on each drivetime program. Certainly can’t say that about many (any?) other sports-type stations.

 

[TFP]

Barstool gets more money from Chernin, they'll be expanding Rough & Rowdy and might even be making their own booze (that's weird to even think about).

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-23/barstool-sports-turns-to-booze-boxing-to-fight-web-media-woes

Unrelated to that - the fact that Mike Portnoy, Esq has his own radio show on Sirius has me in perpetual laughter these days. Everything he does is just automatic belly laughs for me, and I can't even explain why.

 

[jcd0805]

Unrelated to that - the fact that Mike Portnoy, Esq has his own radio show on Sirius has me in perpetual laughter these days. Everything he does is just automatic belly laughs for me, and I can't even explain why.

I wish you could explain his appeal, his appearances on PMT are just kind of "meh" for me.

 

[kelpapa]

I can't explain his appeal, but he's hysterical on PMT. What show is he on?

 

[TFP]

I wish you could explain his appeal, his appearances on PMT are just kind of "meh" for me.

Honestly, I wish I knew too. He’s Morty Seinfeld, and something about his old man ranting combined with his ridiculous accent just hits the spot for me.