Last Night Was A Pivotal Moment In Barstool History
Barstool Sports is the most unique force in entertainment. Probably the most complex team there has ever been. We’re dysfunctional, we’re fucked up. We have deep family issues. We have a tumultuous history that chronicles 15 years now. We’ve had a ton of success, a ton of failures, and infinite amounts of drama. If you took the Kobe and Shaq Lakers, the Jeter and Arod Yankees, the Jim Jackson-cucked-Jason Kidd-with-Toni-Braxton Mavericks, and the Sprewell/Carlesimo Golden State Warriors, put them altogether, poured gasoline on them and lit them on fire, you’d have the level of Barstool Sports dysfunction. Its not a shtick. Its not for content. Theres a lot of hate, theres a lot of rivalries, and about 99% of the time the biggest beef at Barstool will be in house, among each other.
But that 1% of the time…when an outsider steps up and tries to throw rocks at the throne, what happens is beautiful. The Gang puts aside all their bullshit to face a common enemy trying to take down what we value most. Its almost like when rivals play together on Team USA in the Olympics to rep their country. The greater good comes to the forefront and we all prioritize the Stools and Stars. Last night was one of those times, and it may have been the best uniting of Barstool personalities I’ve ever seen.
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The “outsider” this time was Michael Rapaport. Now, technically he was a Barstool Sports employee. But he sure as fuck was never one of us. He most certainly wasnt a Stoolie. Rapaport was one of the first big mercenaries we hired in an effort to expand the brand and continue our never ending quest to own the moon, and I think we learned a very valuable lesson in this experiment. And that is, if you join with this crew, the most important thing is showing loyalty to that logo and to the fans who stand behind it. Rapaport spent a year riding Barstool’s coattails. He never did a fucking thing to help spread this brand. Never mentioned our name once during any of the 50 million appearances he made because he whores himself out to absolutely any outlet that will take him because he knows what little career he had left is fading fast. He never embraced any of the bloggers outside Dave and Dan. Never respected any of the fans. Did nothing but use our platform and our distribution to blast out his race baiting bullshit all while having his team of Rapaport Yes Men and sycophants (Boy, thats gotta be rock bottom right? Being Michael Rapaport’s bitch?) beg Keith for more help getting exposure on our site. Literally beg, like a dog.
And so for months now its been very obvious that the Rapaport Experiment was a bust. I’m sure he did a decent amount of downloads and the ad revenue was what it was, but that doesnt matter. Doesnt matter how famous you are, doesnt matter how many downloads you get, how many clicks you get, or how much exposure you bring – if you do all of that without embracing the Stool, its all for nothing. Rapaport wasnt famous enough, didnt do enough downloads, and didnt make us enough money to justify all his embarrassing bullshit. And last night when he trashed the Barstool brand and trashed the Barstool fans, me and the rest of my blogger coworkers finally had the right to say what we’ve all felt about Rapaport for months: The dude succcccks. He’s a one trick pony and his trick sucks.
What it actually boils down to is that he’s not smart enough to do this job. He’s not clever, he has no wit, and he cant keep up with the guys at this company who are naturally funny and can do this job quickly and effectively. And so he falls back on race, falls back on boring and repetitive shit talk, and thinks that because he’s an actor that Stoolies cant see how bad he is at this job. Last night he showed his true colors by taking personal shots at the bloggers and trying to demean Stoolies and the reality of the matter is Michael Rapaport is too much of a moronic trashbag to sport the Stools and Stars. He doesnt deserve to ride the wave of promotion and distribution built on the backs of everyone from Dave Portnoy back in the early 2000s down to Liz Gonzalez who joined up a matter of weeks ago and represents our brand the right way.
But enough about that old crusty herpe. The real story of last night wasnt about who caused the unification. The story was the Barstool unification itself. Barstool has been a Powder Keg the last 6 weeks. I mean shit, its been a powder keg the last 10 years once things expanded outside of Boston but certain times are more volatile than others. And this winter we were like those green balls of VX gas from The Rock
Coming on the heels of the ESPN Sam Ponder drama, we had a Super Bowl showdown between two teams within the network, a completely preposterous pseudo sexual harassment story, and a pay per view boxing match with two coworkers. Sprinkle in a highly viral and super sensitive personal matter of mine that was made public for everyone, a new Deadspin initiative to blog about us every time we fart, and it’s safe to say Barstool drama was at an all time high. Smitty was at the forefront fighting everyone from Dave to Rapaport to Chef to a fictional character named Donovan McNate. In-house rivalries were raging. Dave bashing me on radio every day, Smitty and Nate doing Smitty and Nate things. Lightswitch Lou ready to fight all of New England Stoolies like Jon Snow at the Battle of the Bastards:
It just felt like we were about to implode into a goddam super nova black hole of smut. Like we were going to eat ourselves alive and all the Deadspins and the Awful Announcings of the world would sit back and enjoy.
And then Michael Rapaport opened up his herpes infested mouth and something special happened. We all remembered what was important. It was like when the playoffs started and Kobe and Shaq just put aside their bullshit and steamrolled their way to another title. With every dumb ass tweet another blogger joined in to get their pound of flesh. It was like the Price is Right…Barstool Nate, Barstool Trent, Barstool Riggs…COME ON DOWN! Reminds me of one of my favorite WWF clips ever where every single Attitude Era Superstar came running down the ramp to deliver their finisher:
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It was Barstool: Infinity War where (almost) every single blogger formed a united front along with the hundreds of thousands of Stoolies against the common enemy. Last night it wasnt Eagles Stoolies vs Pats stoolies. It wasnt Philly Stoolies vs Heartland Stoolies. Nobody cared about my marriage problems anymore. None of our bloggers were fighting over clicks. At our most volatile and crucial moment, where we could have all ripped ourselves to shreds, we all stood together and said “Nah lets make fun of this pasty sickly race baiting fraud hack!” As a guy who has been here a decade and seen the whole roster develop, and watched the unspoken and spoken rivalries and feuds and cliques unfold, it warmed my heart to watch everyone rowing in the same direction. I watched the silent assassin Kmarko unleash FURY. I saw Nate and Smitty on the same side of the line drawn in the sand (shout out Lightswitch!) I saw the new age guys pledge allegiance to The Stool. I was getting texts on the side off the record from everyone at the Stool telling me they had my back and Barstool’s back. And it culminated with Dave, who was MIA during the Twitter debacle, lowering the hammer this morning and doing what we all wanted him to do. We’ve rallied together before but last night was the most galvanizing moment in Barstool history.
I know that all sounds very dramatic. I am looking down right now and seeing I am at 1300 words for this blog. All because some washed up pea brain wracked with white guilt was running his mouth. But thats the world we live in here at Barstool. Its all about laughs and escaping from work but we take this shit very seriously. And when the chips were down – TRULY down, not just “Super Bowl” down or even “pay per view broadcast” down – everybody stood together and said one thing:
“Jesus Christ Michael Rapaport fucking succcccccks.”
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