Jerry Thornton Is Leaving Barstool

The El Pres Coaching Tree continues to grow….

So as most people know by now Jerry got hired to join the afternoon drivetime radio show on WEEI and is leaving Barstool. Obviously it’s somewhat bittersweet for me. I’m sad we’ll no longer have him as part of the team and we’ll miss his Pats coverage for sure. But on the flip side I’m legit psyched for Jerry. Nobody deserves it more than him. He’s worked his ass off here making a name for himself over the past decade. All the hours of hard work he put in finally paid off. If anything it took far too long for somebody in the mainstream media to realize it. I wish him nothing but the best in the future and the door is always wide open if he wants to come back to the Pirate Ship.

Also what is not lost on me is that with Jerry’s departure this officially ends the “Core 4” era. Jerry was the last holdout from the original group of writers who built the foundation for what Barstool Sports is today. Lots of Stoolies probably don’t even know who I’m referring to, but I’m talking Chisholm, Manzo, Jerry and myself as the 4th. Without those 3 guys there is no Barstool. Without them there is no Davey Pageviews, no KFC, no Big Cat, no Kmarko, no Jenna Marbles etc. Everything they did allowed for Barstool to grow into what it is today.

In fact the longer I do this the more I realize how lucky I was to find these guys in the beginning. I literally scour the entire country looking for new bloggers and the first crop of guys I found were still amongst the best writers I’ve ever encountered. Guys who were all far superior to me and were willing to work for free before I could afford to pay anybody. That’s why I’m so happy for Jerry. This is always the goal for guys (or girls) we hire. If you can’t make a full time career here hopefully it leads to somewhere else and that’s exactly what it did for Jerry. It’s awesome to see all his hard work finally pay off like this.

I’m sure people are also wondering why Jerry didn’t just come work at Barstool full time. Well the answer is we don’t have a radio station which is obviously something he loves doing. Also truthfully blogging like we do now is a young man’s game. Barstool has morphed from what it was in the beginning.  Hell I’ve talked candidly about getting too old for this shit.   Back a few years ago when we started turning a profit we did talk about the possibility of Jerry coming fulltime, but at that point it was still a huge risk for a guy with a family and pension. Instead he managed to grow with us and parlay it into a dream job. I mean it just can’t get any better than getting paid to talk sports on the radio.   Bottomline is nothing was given to him.  He earned it every step of the way by just being funnier and better than everybody else.  Tough not to root for a guy like that.

Godspeed Jerry Thornton.