Dumping Them Out: You Can Be on The Rundown
Welcome back to another episode of Dumping Them Out. This episode includes the best Barstool Sports Black Friday promotion of the year. It also includes Boob GIFs.
Here's what Cyber Monday is like for a low-level Barstool Sports employee in the 2nd year of his contract.
On the Tuesday night before Thanksgiving you take the 6 hour flight from NYC to SFO to meet your fiancee's extended family for the first time. It's a big moment for you. It's a bigger moment for your fiancee. Personally, I know I'll be fine. I know how to smile and be nice in a social setting. It's really not that hard to make a family like you. Just don't be a fucking asshole and you're good. I was SIGNIFICANTLY more worried about the Barstool Sports Black Friday promotion.
You land at the airport and realize that you left all of the promotional sweatshirts they gave you for Black Friday back in New York.. No excuse for that. Just an insanely dumb move by me. But that's ok. I can get around it. I just have to be a little more creative.
It's Thanksgiving evening. Keep in mind I'm in California, so the timing is way off. West Coast people live 3 hours in the past. I'm eating Thanksgiving dinner at like 8 PM EST. I'm enjoying my rotisserie chicken, mac n' cheese, and green been casserole. Everything is going swimmingly. Then I receive this email from Dave Portnoy.
Very ominous. Very much a "you better not fuck this up" type of email. And to be perfectly honest, I wasn't prepared. I wasn't unprepared, but I could have prepared better. I had a plenty of tweets ready, but I needed SOMETHING to show a little more effort. That's what a realized… Holy shit, I'm sitting around a table with a bunch of children. These kids love sports. They think Barstool is the coolest thing ever. They would love to be in "a commercial". So after dinner I said, "Hello in-laws and children. don't you think Barstool Sports is pretty cool? Would you like to be in commercial that thousands of people will see?"
Easy money
Thursday was complete. But then there was Friday. Black Friday doesn't stop. Every hour that goes by where you don't push merch you feel like you're that much closer to being fired. But again… I left my merch at home. So I had to work with the items I brought with me. The item I had with me was a Yak hat. Which honestly, and I'm not even joking, is the piece of merch in the store that I've gotten the most use of.
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I'd recommend the Yak hat to anybody. I threw that up on Instagram, put up a couple of pictures from a professional Black Friday promo shoot they had me do. Mashed the re-tweet button like an animal, and survived another day.
Then comes fucking Saturday. I'm pretty out of ideas at this point. But I did think to myself, "you know what, nobody ever promotes the cheaper items in the store. There's probably some people out there who don't know we have some cool items for other $25. Let me make a thread for the people"
I followed that with several more tweets, a couple generic Instagram posts, and survived another day. Saturday wasn't as good as Thursday or Friday, but at least I was on the board.
Then comes Sunday. I had a red eye from from San Francisco to NYC. Flew out at 10:30 PM EST Saturday, landed at 7 AM EST . I finally got back to my bed after long weekend. I said, "you know what John, you should get some rest. You didn't sleep at all on the plane, and you still have to do a Dumping Them Out blog + figure out the Rundown Schedule. My head head hit my pillow around 8:30 AM EST… then something terrible happened…
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HOLY. FUCKING. SHIT. You didn't do any promotion for The Rundown. Not a fucking lick. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Holy fuck I'm going to get roasted fuck fuck fuck. That didn't even cross my mind until now. I was so focused on my own terrible, mid-ass promotion that I forgot I "produced" an entire show. I thought I was fucked. I knew I was fucked. Someone was 100% going to remind Dave that we had no Rundown promotion.
So I said, fuck it. My back is against the wall. I might as well come up with the best promotion yet. Let's get crazy with it. Whoever spends the most money gets to be on The Rundown. Zoom Rundown with Tommy and Clem. They seemed like safe choices to me. They're classic Barstool. So that's the new deal. Whoever sends me the biggest receipt from from now through Cyber Monday gets to be on the Rundown with Tommy and Clem at a later date.
Here's what you need to do.
1. Buy merch
2. Send me a screen shot with today (or tomorrow's) date on it, so I know you bought the merch today/tomorrow
3. Contest ends at 10 PM EST on Cyber Monday. I'll go live online as it's coming down to the wire. When the clock hits 10 PM EST, whoever has sent me the highest receipt gets to be on a Rundown. We'll figure out a date that works for you. Just needs to happen sometime in the early afternoon so we can get it posted by 6:30 PM EST.
Be on the Rundown. Do it. Spend your money. Become famous. Viva.