David Ramirez. Shutterstock Images.

Yesterday, as a I mopped up the skull dust and formaldehyde from the tidy embalming I performed on Pat Bev, I felt a pang of guilt in my heart. Had I done the right thing? Was it really necessary? Clearly, the man did not know the slumbering monster he summoned when he casually denounced my efforts, value, internet sense, scope of influence, and tendency towards achieving virality: 

“They should [be removed from the first class list.] Motherfuckers don’t do shit. They been here a ton of ages, don’t go viral, motherfuckers don’t know [the internet], they’re known only because of the small area they’re in.” -Pat Bev

Clearly Pat Bev started the (wildly unnecessary, entirely unexpected) fight. But knowing the terrifyingly superior arsenal I possess, was I right to have returned fire with a civilization-ending blog, *blacking out obscuring the sun and buckling the very earth beneath Pat’s feet? 

Perhaps not. We’ve seen Pat make savvy moves: he signed a contract renewal with Barstool only days before announcing to the world that he was trading his NBA pedigree for a twilight year in Israel. Or how about the time he catalyzed a grassroots marketing campaign for the Pat Bev Show by refusing to let a woman interview him because she wasn’t subscribed to his podcast:

Brilliant, galvanizing, and not at all sexist or bizarre. Inspired, I recently added 100 new subscribers to Son of a Boy Dad through volunteering at an orphanage, where I spread word that unclaimed children not subscribed to our show would receive half-rations of gruel until they pledged fealty to our channel. Amazing what growth you can achieve under the threat of starvation. 

But we’re all human. And we’ve also learned that Pat, from time to time, will say some of the absolute dumbest shit the world has ever heard. I’m talking brain-corroding, lightspeed-stupid takes that make you mad at whoever clipped his impossibly idiotic trail of logic. 

Come on, man. This is some Mean Girls shit. Kelly Keegs will run you out of town if you keep making us look bad. Then I’ll have to defend you, you’ll stop showing up to work, and the Oklahoma City Thunder will go on another title run as God’s universe-correcting karmic twist. This is the last thing we need. 

The sad part is, I’m sure Pat believes he’s demonstrating his allied support of women; that his *white-knighting solidarity with the WNBA should mount him atop a soap box of progressive rhetoric from which he can spread the good word of women in sport, inspiring generations of little girls to dream that one day, the locker rooms of NBA arenas will be genderless. 

Poor Dwight Howard, a man ahead of his time. 

The reality of vying for equality in women’s sports is to recognize and appreciate that they’re not competing against the men, and should be evaluated based on their own merits and achievements. Serena Williams made this point abundantly clear and women’s tennis remains the clear frontrunner in every metric of female athletic competition—from prize money to marketability to viewership and beyond. Maybe soccer is up there too in years of major international competition. But trying to advocate for any head-to-head clash between a women’s team and a men’s team in the same sport, under the same rules, is reductive and does a disservice to the athletes. There’s a reason you don’t hear Caitlin Clark say she should be paid equal wages to NBA players because her Indiana Fever could take the Pacers in a 48-minute game. 

I don’t even know why I’m trying. 

More troubling than Pat’s bad takes are the flagrantly hypocritical nuggets he drops on a regular basis. Take, for example, this recent segment from the show: 

Here, Pat expresses his disgust over Bill Simons’ (sic) take on DLo Russell. Furious at a non-playing media analyst offering criticism of an active player, Pat rages at the negative haze DeAngelo Russell must live under now that Simons (we know him as Bill Simmons but who’s counting) has indicted his performance on the court. 

“When you personalize someone specific, and put a title on them… and it goes viral, and goes to this place… you gotta live behind that now. Did you say some shit that was true? I don’t think he did. You can’t come out and personalize a player by your comments, and your following takes that as truth…. I don’t think that’s fair.” 

Huh. This feels oddly familiar. Almost as if the pot is *calling the kettle black saying the kettle should be removed from the first class list because it’s trash, has been here forever and doesn’t do shit, forcing the kettle to “live behind that now.” 

Talk about a locker room glue guy. 

Olive branch: it’s not exactly apples to apples because Pat is on this side of the player/experience fence, whereas Bill Simmons is on the outside. But Pat’s been doing this for what, two years? It hardly qualifies him as an authority voice on anything around these parts.

Take me out of the equation. To say this about John Feitelberg and KFC, who have been at the company since fucking 2010, is insane. Especially coming from a guy who has worked here for—as Dave would say—a cup of coffee. For my money, Kevin is a founding pillar of Barstool Sports. It was his blogs that I used to look forward to the most when I was a 20-year-old kid, refreshing the superblog feed to distract myself from term papers in college. His tone was absolutely fearless, biting, cynical, sharp, and entirely identifiable on the blog. His voice jumped off the page and smacked you in the face. If someone asked me which blogger at Barstool has influenced my written work the most, it would be Kevin by a fucking mile. That’s no disrespect to Dan or Dave; I just always loved Kevin’s writing and if you’ve been around long enough, you can probably hear echoes of his voice in mine. 

Feits created Saturdays Are For The Boys—a campaign that seemingly funded the biggest growth period of the company from like 2016 – 2018. Before that, he dutifully donned mascot suits and fired C02 cannons at a never-ending blackout tour that, once again, kept the lights on at a time when cash was both imperative and scarce. The guy worked for free for a while because Dave simply couldn’t pay him, doing whatever needed to be done because he loved the company and loved the game. 

Point is, I respect the OGs—without whom it’s hard to know if any of us are here today, shitting on coworkers and offering inane takes on the WNBA that set the women’s movement back decades. 

I had no plan to write a sequel blog today. It’s not my style, really. But then I saw this from Pat, when the main account posted a clip of me talking to Dave about the first class bullshit where I told him that our Head of Commerce was the guy who originally suggested I be taken off the list: 

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By the way, I don’t think I’m snitching. Dave wanted the list dead. Our commerce guy catalyzed that, and thus I’d bet he looks GOOD to Dave. Not that Pat would ever grasp the context of this. 

But if this is just starting Pat, my mind goes to a great moment in Oppenheimer, where Matt Damon’s character explains why they chose to drop two bombs on the Japan: 

“We intend to demonstrate it in the most unambiguous terms. Twice. Once to show the weapon’s power, and a second to show we can keep doing this until they surrender.” 

Consider today’s blog the Nagasaki drop to yesterday’s Hiroshima. I live for this shit. You have no idea how easy this is for me. I can do this every single day without breaking a sweat. Oh, and I’m only going at 60%. Call them shots across the bow. You have the option to let this fade, and we can resume pleasantries or move forward in a space of tolerance or even respect. I don’t take any of this personally; it’s sport fishing to me. 

Or we can go the other way. But I promise you won’t like what I already know. 

PS: *Certain portions of this blog have been struck through to avoid any opportunity to invoke the race card. Â