Barstool Sports Has Mastered Turning Workplace Drama Into Reality Show-Worthy

Dave Portnoy makes most of the headlines when it comes to Barstool Sports, but his creation, which he recently re-purchased for a dollar, is so much more than him in 2024. The Barstool Sports brand is made up of hundreds – maybe thousands? – of people writing blogs and doing videos and podcasts (and video podcasts) about various topics under the greater Barstool umbrella. And each person and program has the capacity to become the main character of the Barstool ecosystem at any given time.

Looking at a recent story that got some pickup by multiple outside entities, we dove headfirst into the web of blogs and pods and relationships affected by Dave Portnoy making the executive decision to cancel Barstool Radio over the weekend. It was a story covered by the Daily Mail, Awful Announcing, Barrett Sports Media, Men’s Journal and the New York Post.

This is not a criticism of any of those publications. Barstool fans click on Barstool content. It’s good business to write something like, “Dave Portnoy makes drastic Barstool Radio change, blames ‘delusional’ Kelly Keegs.” But what if we follow the clicks down the rabbit hole? Have you ever wondered what kind of weirdness something like this could start? Or what kind of weirdness started it in the first place? If you haven’t, thanks for going this far. If you have, read on.

Over the last week, two Barstool employees who don’t seem to have ever met engaged in a public and published feud. From there, one Barstool radio show was canceled, and in the wake of this decision a domino effect of shot-taking has occurred between two other completely unrelated shows. And as all this drama has unfolded, it was all extremely well-documented on social media as Barstool employees seem to tirelessly turn workplace tension into content for the site’s most die-hard fans.

This seems to have all started last week when the aforementioned Kelly Keegs said that she likes to work from home on Fridays. This did not sit well with Ohio’s Tate who wrote a post about it. Here’s what the Barstool Idol Season 2 Contestant had to say in a post titled, “I’m Sick And Tired Of Lazy Barstool Employees (@ Kelly Keegs).”

“I don’t know Kelly Keegs, never met her, and honestly don’t have one bad thing to say about her other than she is apparently extremely lazy, takes for granted a job that millions of people would cut their arm off for, and takes advantage of a man who has given a bunch of nobodies the luxurious life of fame and fortune. Am I hearing her correctly?”

As a response, Keegs wrote her own Barstool Sports blog post titled, “Who The Fuck Is “Ohio’s Tate” And Why Is He Calling Me Lazy?” In this blog Keegs breaks down her Barstool Radio origin story, how much she does for the company, and by comparison, how little Barstool Tate has done for the company in her opinion. It’s a fascinating historical artifact on its own and also a reminder of how hard it is for the online community to produce content on Fridays, which is something we understand here at The Big Lead.

Anyway, this all took place on Friday. It then simmered over the weekend and when Monday morning hit, Keegs ignored the drama and instead focused on other things during Barstool Radio. Somewhere in here she made a grave mistake. Via the New York Post:

Portnoy explained on the “Barstool Rundown” that he “had no choice but to cancel” Barstool Radio due to Keegs and Francis spending most of the episode talking about Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce, instead of discussing Keegs’ feud with fellow Barstool employee, Ohio’s Tate.

Portnoy later called Keegs delusional on Twitter.

And like that it was over. Barstool Radio is dead… long live Barstool Radio? Portnoy quickly announced there would be a new show and you basically got to watch how the Barstool sausage is made in real-time. To organize the new show, Portnoy called Barstool personality Kirk Minihane who was in the middle of recording his own show at the time. At this point it was like fans were sitting in on a production meeting as they hammered out the details.

There really is a lot going on here. First of all, it appears that no one at Barstool has any idea what time anything at Barstool airs. Portnoy calls, gets through, and then complains that the producer answered the phone. Minihane has already gotten former NHL player and current Barstool personality Ryan Whitney on board for the new show in a previous segment. The three of them are amenable to any day or time… except for Friday.

While they were trying to figure out a…