The days surrounding Thanksgiving as a pawn in the chokehold of the corporate American grind can be mentally taxing and emotionally degrading. No one understands that more than Barstool Sports employees.
The 1-2 punch of Black Friday to Cyber Monday at Barstool (reminder the whole store is 20% off) has always been less about the actual merch sold than it is a test of who can send the perfect mix of quantity and quality promos pushing Barstool Golf paraphernalia, among the other less important brands. Remember, with Dave Portnoy it’s always brick by brick and never schtick by schtick.
Each year Gaz sets up the big board in the pool house to analyze who is getting the gift of public humiliation this holiday season. Grudge Dave is the strongest brand at Barstool, and nothing gets him more fired up than those who wrong Mother, except for slackers.
Honorable Mention: Bussin’ With The Boys
I am not big into golf, but when I saw the Bussin’ boys came out with their own line of golf merch I was enamored. The big brains on these guys to merge the worlds of Barstool and Golf into branded clothing is proof enough that CTE isn’t real. Plus I don’t want Will Compton to fart audio me for not including him on the list.
Now for the official top 5 ranking…
5. The Barstool Sports production/social media teams
These guys and gals are working extra hard this year to secure the bag. For every dollar over the company goal that is sold, the behind the scenes crew gets a bonus much more fiscally valuable than getting the honor of showering on camera for all of your coworkers watching in the other room.
One might argue, however, that some of these producers are exorbitantly wealthy in memories and don’t need an extra boost in pay.
4. Kayce Smith
2M views and a billion seats taken. Numbies don’t lie.
3. Dave Portnoy
You have to lead from the front in times like this, and no one does it better than Dave. You don’t go from selling newspapers on the street to having an underground tunnel system at your 3rd summer home without being able to push a 20% discount on shirts with Brandon Walker’s face on it. All this while going through a devastating breakup, too. I guess it really is true what they say about Michigan Men–they are just built different.
I know he hates exploiting his employees for financial gain, but anything to support the brand and thus small businesses everywhere. What a guy.
2. Nicholas “Nick” Turani
Hand up, I was not aware it was humanly or robotically possibly to upload a 42 minute video to X (formerly Twitter). But by god won’t he do it. This video has a longer run time than the longest episode of Friends. It’s worth $597.1 million in Super Bowl ad dollars. The average woman could logistically orgasm between 3-4 times with a partner, and 5-6 times alone during the duration of this promo. And boy, did we.
1. Fastoolie
I’ll be honest none of the “help me I’m poor” videos from the behind the scenes crew tugged at my heartstrings until I saw this promo from Fastoolie. A bonus means next to nothing to Fastoolie. He could be, and likely is, paid in $50 Barstool giftcards and still has that endearing smile plastered across his face. Fastoolie believes Barstool is powered by how much Viva spirit is in the air and the only way to fix the engine is to sing “Rise Pageviews Rise” for all to hear.
If you did not buy any Barstool merch this Black Friday/Cyber Monday, you should have to see an ASPCA Sarah McLachlan style commercial of Fastoolie shivering in the old Chicago office before every video.