Who Is Bailey Carlin, What Is He Doing At Barstool Sports And Four Things I Learned From My First Token CEO Podcast Recording

Hey everyone. I am Bailey Carlin, I work for Barstool Sports now, and I have been waiting a really long time to be able to say that.

A little bit about myself. I am 25 years old. I worked as a social media editor at the XFL for four months until it exploded. Some of you may recognize me as “Walmart PFT” who was with him the entire day of his XFL tryout. I delivered an incredible line on Stool Scenes ("Gametime")

I also took this now legendary picture of PFT.

Before the XFL, I was a social media editor and gambling writer at Sports Illustrated for 18 months until some people who I wasn’t on the same wavelength as bought the company and I decided to leave. Before THAT I was a high school English teacher. A combination of  working for college newspapers, running a Knicks blog, horny tweeting, Trill Withers RTs and luck got me out of teaching and into SI. When the XFL folded a handful of weeks ago, a ton of people who are way more important than myself said some really kind things about me and my "I got fired" tweet and meme started to get some attention.

All of a sudden, moments after being ousted on a 300+ person zoom call, people were comparing my free agency to that of LeBron James and Kevin Durant. Other people's words, not mine. As someone with crippling self doubt, I'm certainly not complaining about it. I got an email from Gaz that day to set up a meeting to gauge my interest and get to know one another after a few Barstool pals (shoutout Trill/PFT/Clem) very kindly floated my name out there. I met with a ton of companies that week, but my first meeting with Gaz never left the back of my mind and the choice to head to Barstool was honestly an easy one. I've known a ton of the people here for years now both in Twitter and real life. I've been a close reader and follower of Barstool since 8th grade. Things moved quickly and, after a call with the Token CEO herself, I signed on as a social media specialist and editor.

I don’t technically start working full time until June, but when Erika approached me last week about a project I could start now, I said of course because, well, she is the CEO of the company, but I also thought it was a really unique opportunity to wade into the water before fully diving in next month. So I’m going to be blogging about episodes of Token CEO and topics related to the pod. This won’t look the same every episode. Sometimes (like today) it will be lists, sometimes I’ll expound and go further into depth on topics, sometimes I’ll be arguing against Erika’s points. Honestly, I’m figuring it out as I go here. Day by day.

Erika is smart (just think about the fact that she decided to hire me in the midst of a global pandemic, what a move). I’ve already learned a ton from Token CEO as a listener and look forward to learning more this way. So, following the longest intro ever, here are the four things I learned from my first Token CEO recording and some research I did afterward.

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1. Intellectual property (IP) is super goddamn important. To me, personally, it seems like the kind of thing you would absolutely do everything in your power to keep if given the chance. Seems like companies (as they should) generally do everything they can to hang onto this. Owning IP of brands that you helped build up and support is key to any company trying to build brands and Barstool understands this as well as anyone.

2. The NFL goes way out of their way to abuse their power to stop people from using the term Super Bowl even though they really don’t have much legal standing to do so. This was not a surprising discovery in the slightest (because NFL), but is still incredibly annoying. I’m going to say it again just to spite them: Super Bowl. I’m sure they are simply sick about me doing so.

3. Deep Impact is a movie that exists and seems to be the same exact movie as Armageddon. Both are about a meteoric disaster of some sort. Both released within a two month period in 1998. This is legal even though they’re basically the same movie and someone who worked on Deep Impact said Armageddon just straight stole the idea. Going to be honest, I don’t think this should be legal, but I now know that it is. I do not foresee myself viewing this film in the future.

4. Erika is a truly gifted cusser. F-bombs just absolutely flying around willy-nilly with incredible precision. As someone who is 25 years old and still afraid to use profanity in front of his parents, I left feeling inspired. 

That’s it for today, folks. Nice to finally meet you all, see you tomorrow.

You can listen to the episode of Token CEO I wrote about here: