This weekend I had full intentions to go to the Red & White Scrimmage at UW-Madison to get a general idea of how the basketball team will be this season. So I could, you know, write about sports. Well, a hangover from peach bellini vodka and cranberry juice won, and I napped on the couch for basically the whole day. I had been thinking I was going to have absolutely NO content to discuss this week, since I slept through all the football games, the World Series isn't set to start until today, the Bulls don't give me much to talk about right now, etc., etc. Then, much to my surprise, the sports gods answered and my favorite blog site (besides mine duh), Barstool Sports, was done dirty by ESPN by cancelling Barstool Van Talk (you'll see me refer to this as BVT throughout the post) after one episode.
For those of you who don't know, Barstool Sports is a multifunctional sports blog. I say multifunctional because their content has expanded from creating content solely about sports via their blogs. They have Youtube videos (shoutout to One Bite with Davey Pageviews), a loyal Twitter following, and have even expanded to covering The Bachelor series, which I find extremely admirable. They've begun to employ more and more women, and their CEO is even a woman. Two of their interns have their own video series called "Chicks in the Office", where Fran and Ria cover everything from Cam Newton to Kylie Jenner's unconfirmed pregnancy.
Barstool has also had maybe the biggest success with their multitude of podcasts, the most popular being Pardon My Take. This podcast is chock full of satire, thanks to comedic hosts Big Cat and PFT Commenter. His name is confidential and we will likely know what it is when the Loch Ness Monster is discovered aka never. The two have been hard at work on the podcast for the last 18 months and have shot up the charts on iTunes. Recently, they were afforded what can be seen as an amazing opportunity by ESPN with BVT at the coveted 1 AM Wednesday time slot (or wait, is it Tuesday? The fan base could never figure it out tbh). Now, Barstool is never without controversy. The whole point of their existence is to go against the grain with speaking their minds. I respect the shit out of that. Well, the oh so lovely Sam Ponder decided to dig up some dirt and colorful comments made by El Presidente and John Feitelberg (aka Feits) from three years ago. She caused a huge social media storm by blaming it on BVT host Big Cat.
So here's the problem. Yes, Barstool has said controversial things that can be seen as "sexist" as their platform was growing. After all, they've been through the explosive growth of the internet since Pres started it. What people don't realize is that the website, while creating serious sports content, is satirical. They make statements that are supposed to get people talking. This is what I appreciate about them. They don't hold back from their thoughts, opinions, etc. Why would you want a politically correct sports network to follow? I sure don't. I want real thoughts, not robotized sports recaps. Now, if you're ESPN and making a deal with what your company considers to be the devil, you can't tell me they had absolutely no idea comments about their employees were made. By cancelling after one episode, you know they caved to that one person. BVT beat out basically every single network in their time slot (you can check out the numbers on CEO Erika Nardini's Twitter page). Am I disappointed? Absolutely. Am I surprised? Unfortunately not. ESPN wasn't ready for genuinely funny content. So here's my advice to Stoolies: subscribe, unsubscribe, and rate 5 starts for Pardon My Take. Big Cat and PFT work so hard to create hilarious content and build relationships with major players in sports. I'd love to see them take over the world. Until next time, Hooray Sports! fans. Maybe then I won't have a hangover and can blog about real sporting events.
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