Welcome To The Heartland: Nick Maraldo
When it comes to Nick Maraldo, I am confident in saying he is the most professional guy on this team. From behind the scenes work, to working with the New York office, he does it all, and that is not surprising with his past work before Barstool Heartland.
“I worked in IT for about eight to nine years for a major health care enterprise in Pittsburgh,” said Nick.
Nick and Pat have known each other since high school where they were one year apart. Nick is one year older than Pat, but they still hung out and partied a lot together through high school and college. Nick was actually a factor in Pat’s decision to attend West Virginia University for football.
“I was one of the guys who was heavily pushing him to go to WVU because I was there freshman year when he was being recruited,” said Nick. “I ended up transferring to the University of Pittsburgh, but we kept in touch and he would come up to hang out.”
Even in their early years of adulthood, Nick could tell Pat would be an entertainer. With, or without the platform football gave him, he was confident Pat would spread laughter and cheer to anyone who would listen. After college Nick and Pat kept in contact, and Nick actually worked with Pat on his I-69 comedy tour as well as his early live stream shows that Pat did years back, so it isn’t surprising that Pat wanted to bring along Nick on this journey.
“About a month before he actually retired he approached me,” said Nick. “We had talked about it for years. Since he was drafted we talked about doing something like this. We decided to wait till after football to do something, then this came along and I was all in.”
Like Digs, Nick had just made huge strides in his professional career right before joining Barstool. He had just finished a masters program, but knew that this is something he wanted to do and work for.
“Obviously we all gave up a lot of security in our lives to try and build something awesome here, now it’s on us to deliver,” said Nick.
“I’m lucky to be part of the podcast, but other than that I try and handle all things production and the technological side,” said Nick. “Right now the main focus is getting the office and studios built, getting everything outfitted and equipped. We have to make sure it all works there.”
Nick enjoys this challenge and is willing to accept it. What he see’s forming here has him excited of the future.
“We are essentially launching a start up and I think a lot of people don’t realize that,” said Nick. “The stoolies have a high level of expectation, which I respect. They want good content so we want to give them great stuff. There is a reason Barstool has done so well and that is because of the drive of the people who work here, quality of the content, and fan involvement so that is something we need to match.”
Nick joked when discussing the future of the Heartland.
“We are either going to go broke, crash and burn and be a hilarious Barstool documentary,” said Nick. “Or hopefully we help Barstool take over the world and be that go to media company for sports, entrainment, and comedy.”
Follow @BarstoolHrtland and @NickMaraldo
Written by @JakeBass657