Dumping Them Out: Chicago Office

John Rich2/24/2025 1:00 AM

Welcome back to another episode of Dumping Them Out. I visited the Barstool Chicago office for the first time last week. For this blog I'm going to force myself to do my least favorite thing in the world, which is talk about myself as if people should be interested in what I'm doing on a daily basis. Despite that literally being my job, I don't think I'll ever get comfortable with that. But that's the beauty of Dumping Them Out. Whenever I feel like I should talk about myself, I do it here. Because for the people reading this who couldn't care less about my business dealings in the Windy City, they can at least enjoy some Boob GIF's. Unless you're a Barstool fan who's either a straight woman or a gay man (lmao yeah right). In that case, I'm sorry, but I got nothing for ya.

I didn't have any reason in particular for going to Chicago last week. I didn't even bother trying to expense the trip. I just thought to myself, "I haven't seen the Chicago office yet. I'd like to see some of my friends who moved away. Might as well catch a flight and spend a week out there."

To be honest, my week got off to a pretty rough start last Sunday afternoon before I flew out. When I texted Big Cat to remind him that I would be working there for the week, he responded, "Yeah office is closed tomorrow but otherwise yes."

President's Day had totally slipped my mind. I forgot we're celebrating President's again. Not ideal for the one week I choose to work from Chicago to be a 4-day week. But whatever. That didn't matter. I could still find a way to be productive when the office is closed. But things got worse when I arrived to the airport for my 5pm flight. The New York City area was hit with a Winter Storm Warning. Flights were getting cancelled left and right. My flight kept getting pushed back 30 minutes at a time. I thought for a minute there it was going to be cancelled altogether, and I'd have wasted my whole Sunday afternoon/evening at the Newark airport just so I could get to Chicago a full day before I actually needed to be there. So I fired off this tweet (as a joke).

Apparently, despite Big Cat having already sent a company wide email to let the Chicago office know they would be closed on President's Day, it seemed as if half the office didn't realize it until they saw my tweet. Nobody was more perplexed by the President's Day office closure than Ben Mintz. Mintzy immediately texted me to ask if the office was legitimately closed. I guess he thought I was playing some sort of weird joke? Idk. Even when I assured him that Big Cat just told me so, I could tell he didn't believe me. So to put an end to the conversation, I decided to screen shot Big Cat's reply and send it directly to Ben Mintz. Just so he knew for sure I wasn't fucking with him. Naturally… as one is prone to do when screenshotting someone's text to send to someone else…

That's about as harmless and excusable as "sending a screen shot of someone else's text back to them" can get. But it never feels good to do that. Especially not to someone who is basically your boss. The very person who put you in a position to be hired, and could have you fired or re-signed in the snap of a finger. As harmless as it was, my heart sank down to my balls the second I realized what I did.

But it didn't matter. Big Cat is a reasonable guy. And thankfully, my flight ended up taking off only 4 hours later than scheduled. President's Day out of the office in Chicago turned out to be a smashing success as I was blessed with an invitation to lunch with the aforementioned Ben Mintz. A lunch during which I was graciously invited back to 32nd story one-bedroom apartment to "watch him open boxes". Ben Mintz opening boxes did not disappoint.

I figured if I was spending a week in Chicago, I might as well use the tried and true method of following around Mintzy with a camera for a couple hours for free content. I would have been stupid not to. I'm not the first one to utilize that strategy, and I certainly won't be the last.

The next day (Tuesday) was my first day in the Chicago office. On Tuesday I killed a guy. The Yak had me do the gauntlet. Part of the gauntlet is scoring a goal (soccer) on a goalie. The Yak's goalie's name is Ryan. He does Barstool After Dark, and is a fucking menace in net. While playing goalie on me, his arm fell off. It was a whole thing. I felt terrible. Video below is cued up to the gauntlet incident.

If you watch the tape back, the whole thing is really Steven Cheah's fault. I'm pretty sure my third shot crossed the goal line. If Steven Cheah had been more adamant about the ball crossing the line, I would have moved on to the next stage, and Ryan wouldn't have had to got his arm amputated.

Just kidding. It was only dislocated.

Since I killed Ryan, I was tasked to take his place rebounding Tuesday night for Ohio's Tate and Dana Beers in their Barstool After Dark "make bunch of free throws in a row while also drinking beers challenge".

In the end, Danny Conrad ended up taking most of the rebounds. Tbh I think he wanted to do it the whole time. We kept going back and forth with, "No really I'm happy to do it." … "Are you sure? I don't have anything else to do you can go home if you want." … "No for real I promise I don't mind." … "No really it's ok I'll just do it."

Eventually Danny out niced me and took over the majority of the rebounding duties. But I was there for when Dana hit 20 free throws in a row. A real "Where were you?" moment in Barstool Sports history. I like to think my crisp, in rhythm chest passes played a major role in it.

Since Danny was doing most of the rebounding, I spent most of my night watching Tate and Dana hit free throws from the comfort of a chair on Mook Can't Sleep.

I streamed with Mook until 8am. Longest I've been on camera since I started a Barstool. Realistically, I was probably on camera for longer night than the rest of my Barstool Sports career combined. Didn't sleep a wink. The next day I was dragging. I needed a nap. But I didn't want to go home. And I felt weird about napping in the office. So I put a plan together that I thought was full-proof. I found a semi-secluded room with a couch. I laid down with my laptop open on my lap as if I were writing a blog. I figured if anybody opened the door to the room, it would be loud enough to wake me up. Then by the time they saw me on the couch, my eyes would be open and I'd be "writing a blog". Here's how that went.

Even though I was documented awake in the office for the past 36 hours, and a nap was 100% warranted, that's not the best look. Especially for a documented ex-drug addict. In hindsight, I shouldn't have tried to disguise it. Having the laptop on my lap made it look so much worse. Thanks for that Nicky Smokes.

I was also lucky enough to be in attendance for the greatest, most high brow bit to ever grace the World Wide Web.

But most importantly (in the back of my mind this was the only thing I really wanted to accomplish while in Chicago) I broke the Barstool Sports long drive record on the Chicago golf simulator. I heard that Brandon Walker once drove the ball 348. I'm not sure if I can drive the ball that far in real life. But I've seen videos of Brandon Walker swinging a golf club. No offense to Brandon, but when I saw his swing, I said to myself, "If you can't drive farther than that guy, you should just walk into traffic."

It took me longer than I thought, but I didn't it. But of course, the very next morning… Hank tells me the literal long drive champion of the world, Kyle Berkshire is coming to the office at 10:30am. Which honestly felt like kind of a dick move. Could they not let me have one thing? They couldn't even let me have the long drive record for a full 24 hours before they brought in the longest golf ball driver to ever to shit all over it? I thought that was rude. If I didn't know any better I'd call it a personal attack.

A lot of people say that golf simulator is juiced. And they might be right (they're probably right). I don't know if that simulator entirely accurate. But I did some digging to try and get to the bottom of it, and unless multiple people at the office are really just lying to my face, there's nobody at Barstool Chicago who knows how to set the golf simulator on any sort of "beginner mode" to make people's drives register as further than they actually are. Now are the default settings making our drives longer than they would be in real life? That's very possible. I asked Kyle Berkshire directly what he thought about our simulator's accuracy, and in his opinion the spin rate, ball speed, and the actual distance of our drives were pretty accurate. But he did think that the swing speed may have been too high. Which makes sense. When I got my club fitted by a Ping Golf rep on a Trackman about 6-7 years ago, my swing speed was topping out at 126. On the Chicago simulator, when I was hitting with Kyle Berkshire's long drive club, I was pushing 135.

But also.. Kyle Berkshire has hit a drive over 500 in real life. For what it's worth, he was barely touching 400 on the simulator…

Honestly, I don't think I'm that far off. People think those simulator numbers are crazy because professional golfers top out around 125 or so on the PGA Tour. But they aren't swinging their balls off on tour. They're putting together a perfect fucking golf swing where their entire body is perfectly in sync to hit their drives consistently 300-350. And professional golfers aren't these big jacked Adonis's of human being. They're roughly the same size as me. I don't think it's crazy to think that me swinging balls to the wall would be faster than a PGA Tour golfer taking a safe, measured golf swing in the midst of a round where his goal is to put the ball in the fairway. The way I was swinging in that simulator, at least half of those balls are going OB. Professional golfers are swinging 120 mph and putting it in the middle of the fairway 90% of the time. So that simulator might register a bit long. But it's not insane to think that when everything comes together perfectly, and I put a perfect swing on the ball, that I wouldn't be up there with their average mid round swings.

One final thing. Sorry I know this is way too long. I'd like it on the record that with Kyle Berkshire's long drive club, I hit it 355. I think that footage will be out in a PMT golf video sometime in the future. Also… I didn't want to rub it in at the time. But I also broke Brandon Walker's long drive record of 348 hitting the ball off the deck (without a tee). Here's the video from my burner Twitter. Didn't want tweet it from main. Felt like I was bragging too much.