Dumping Them Out: Barstool Is An Enigma
Welcome back to another episode of Dumping Them Out. The March Madness edition (sort of). I'm currently coming off the most enjoyable conference tournament week of my life. On Wednesday morning, I woke up feeling about as sick as I've ever felt. But against my better judgement, and because I'm terrified of not showing up to the office, I dragged myself into work to get the Rundown taken care of. But as soon as that was over I got my ass home.
I laid my ass on the couch for 2 days and watched college basketball. Then Saturday morning, when I was finally starting to feel better, my fiancée woke up with terrible back pain. Came out of nowhere. She couldn't do shit. It's actually kind of scary. She's still not great, and refuses to go to the doctor, which is kind of stressing me out, but that's aside the point. The point is it gave me another couple days of sitting my ass at home watching basketball without having to worry about "wHat a NiCe dAy iT iS OutSidE", or fulfilling any sort of St. Patrick's Day obligations. I enjoy St. Patrick's day as much as the next guy, but at 32 years old I'm more than happy doing nothing. I ate Shepard's Pie and drank 3 Guinness's. That's plenty enough celebration for me. And because of that, I've never been more locked in to college basketball come tournament time.
While I was watching basketball on my couch and tweeting bullshit, Barstool Sports successful office in Chicago was having a conference tournament stream. I spend a lot of time thinking about how Barstool works the way it does, what makes it work, and what different people's roles are. For some people, it might as well be in their job description to fuck up. Fucking up is the best thing some people can do for their careers. The best example of this is Mintzy. Mintzy will do something stupid like leak the Surviving Barstool finale, then Dave will get furious, then Barstool gets content out of it. Obviously Mintzy isn't supposed to do that, but realistically… that's why he's employed here. If Mintzy doesn't constantly fuck up, he's not nearly as valuable to Barstool.
To a lesser extent, Rico has a bit of that in him too. Rico falling asleep on the stream this weekend is a prime example.
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I'm not trying to defend Rico falling asleep. I'm not even sure what point I'm making. It's just something I think about a lot. Because realistically, for anybody who's been keeping up with the college basketball streams this weekend, the leading story from this weekend was 100% Rico falling asleep. Rico falling asleep made for better content than anybody else on stream who managed to stay awake and cheer on their teams. That's just a fact. So it always makes me laugh when people like that girl who DM'd Dave say how they would KILL to be on the stream, and they would be better because they would NEVER fall asleep like that. Yeah.. I'm sure you wouldn't pass out. You'd probably sit there on the couch like most people and cheer on your bets. But if you don't fuck up in a horrible way, then what's the fun in that. Someone has to fuck up. If everyone at the company just falls in line and does what they're supposed to do, Barstool would be boring as shit.
Again, I'm not defending Rico falling asleep on the stream. I'd love to be on that stream too, and there's no chance I'd take it for granted like that. Honestly I have no fucking clue what my point even is. Barstool is just such an enigma. Rico fucking up and getting himself banned from next week's stream (for the time being) is the funniest thing that happened this week by far. You can't pay somebody to do that. That can't happen on purpose. So it always cracks me up when people act like Mintzy or Rico don't deserve their job. Maybe on paper they do things that make them bad employees. But it's funny how everyone thinks they'd be better because they're able to "follow the rules". In a lot of cases that just makes you worse. Or at least more boring. Take me for example. I follow all the fucking rules and I'm a nobody here. But at the same time we need the fans who are pissed off that we have employees falling asleep, and DM Dave that they can do a better job. It's all a part of the machine. Whatever. I'm fully aware I'm just rambling at this point. It's just that I work for a weird fucking company and I'm constantly fascinated by how all the pieces fall into place.
Sorry for the rant. As I mentioned earlier, I'm locked into March Madness this year. By far my favorite team in the tournament is Grand Canyon. They won the WAC last night. Most exciting team I've ever watched play basketball. They're gonna get a 12-10 seed. I wrote a blog about how much I love them, and was immediately hit with comments about how they're the "Liberty of college basketball". i.e. they're a "for profit Christian school" with strict conservative values and blah blah blah. I guess as a lib I'm not supposed to like them. Fucking relax people. I like the way they play basketball. They have fun players. To be perfectly frank, I don't really give a shit what Grand Canyon does. I don't care if I agree with them politically or not. If their players are exciting on the court I'm gonna cheer for them. Grand Canyon is making the Sweet Sixteen this year. Mark my words.