The Big Deal About Big Cat

Why Fans of Fans Are Pissed

Let me start by saying that I’m not a hardcore “Stoolie” per se. At 47, I'm probably too old for that. I don’t consume much Barstool content other than PMT and some social media posts of the few other Barstool accounts I follow, mainly on X (It still feels weird to call it that, wtf Elon?). I don’t listen to The Yak (Big Cat’s other pod - I’m not even sure who else is on it) or Macrodosing (PFT’s other pod that he does with Arian Foster). I only know of some of the other Barstool characters peripherally, and find many of them to be annoying.

But, I must admit, PMT does it for me.

I don’t buy Big Cat’s branded Stella Blue Coffee. I don’t buy PMT or Barstool merch. I just listen. Like so many others, I listen as I walk my dog, as I’m in my car, and while at home. I enjoy their bits, their fan-based takes, and their comedic spins on what had been, up until the recent podcast revolution, such serious and bad-faith sports topics and debates, run and controlled by corporate decision makers, and limited by the seemingly endless advertisements we were all forced to sit through.

I’ve appreciated the hole that Barstool and PMT filled when it came to sports talk in general. Like many sports fans, I was so tired of the Colin Cowherds and Skip Baylesses of the industry. I was sick of the fake debate formats, the race-baiting talking heads, the mindless and overused topics and views, the one-sided portrayal of otherwise subtle and nuanced issues, and especially of the unrelatable people espousing them. Barstool in general, and PMT specifically represented the voice of the common fan.

So, that is the issue of what has recently come to light about Big Cat. Presented as a long-time suffering Chicago sports fan, Dan was supposed to be the fans’ fan. Big Cat’s misery was relatable. His anger, especially toward Chicago Bears’ ownership, front office and coaching were all things that any fan—even fans of good organizations (except maybe Hank)—could understand.

But, as it turns out, Big Cat isn’t from Chicago. He grew up in Newton, Massachusetts. For at least half of his life, he was a Patriots fan. This fact was, evidently, pointed out on an episode of the Surviving Barstool series, something I don’t watch, so I learned of this fact a day or two later than most others. Since then, much of the comments under Dan’s and other Barstool social media posts have garnered the “f-word” from disgruntled listeners: fraud.

Is Big Cat a fraud? Dan addressed the issue on this past Monday’s podcast (It starts at around the 1:54:06 mark.), explaining that he was initially tasked by Barstool with blogging about Chicago sports. He stated that he wondered if he should come clean about his New England roots, but, acting on the advice of Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy, he kept his past a secret. He, along with current PMT Producer Hank Lockwood, explained that, within the heated culture of team-based blogging, admitting to such a thing would have likely meant a sports writing career death sentence, and though Big Cat didn’t want to deceive his audience, he kept at it.

He talked about how he had family in Chicago and that, when growing up, Chicago was already like his “other city,” the teams his “second teams”. He went on to explain that, since moving out of Massachusetts for college, then becoming a Chicago sports blogger and podcaster, he truly did become a Chicago sports fan, that he fell in love with the city, and that he really does experience the agony (and occasional thrills) of what has become Chicago sports. But a lot of the loyal fans of the show and of Big Cat aren’t buying it. To some, he is no longer relatable. His fandom is, at best, is forced; at worst, it’s completely fake.

When I discovered the news, I joked online that I was “questioning my entire life.” It was simply hard to believe. While PFT and Hank Lockwood understandably stuck up for their co-worker, insisting that his Chicago sports fandom was something that simply could not be faked, many of the listeners, including myself, are still somewhat skeptical.

Here’s the thing. I’m a life-long Redskins fan. I witnessed their three Super Bowl victories, their last of which occurred when I was 15. Little did I know the winning drought that was to ensue, the dysfunction that would be brought about by then-new ownership, and the 30+ years of ineptitude and incompetence of an organization that became an utter embarrassment of the league. I finally came to the conclusion that my beloved Redskins were hopeless. The team I loved so much didn’t stand a chance of returning to their old glory with majority owner Daniel Snyder at the helm, and the chances of him selling were basically nonexistent. The team I had connected to cherished childhood memories of going to RFK Stadium with my dad, of watching them win Super Bowls at my uncle’s house, of my brother and I mimicking John Riggins in our backyard, were all just that: memories, well in the past, almost certainly never to repeat.

My team, at least for a large part of the year, was honestly making me miserable. Football seasons were not the same. All wins were happenstance of league parity. All losses were inevitable. Playoffs were unlikely. Playoff wins were a miracle that only Gibbs’s second tenure produced, and even he could only produce one. I wanted desperately to root for a team that stood a chance, but what could I do?

I’ve lived in Ravens territory for 18 years now. I’d be lying if I said I never had fleeting thoughts of “jumping ship”. But every time I thought about it, it concluded with the fact that my “new fanhood” wouldn’t be real. It would be fake. It would be forced, contrived. It would be front-running. It wouldn’t be right. More importantly, it wouldn’t even feel good.

You see, fanhood, no matter how it comes to be, is inherited. Often passed down through generations, though sometimes through other ways of childhood circumstance, once a fanhood is established, it becomes, by definition, unbreakable. Even if we make a choice about which team to root for outside of our parents or place of birth or residence, once that choice gets made, that’s it. With rare exception, like a team leaving town, the choice of your favorite team is one that’s made on a forever basis. Fandom is as much a part of the fan as anything else in his or her life. Memories cannot be changed. Team allegiances cannot be broken. Sticking it out through the bad times is what makes the good times that much more rewarding. Yes, it sucked to have Ravens fans rubbing it in my face that my team was a league laughing stock, but what could I do? Changing my fanhood would have been like changing my last name or deciding that I no longer enjoyed pizza. It was never going to happen.

Like many Redskins fans, I became apathetic. I had to separate myself form the team’s results. For the sake of my own sanity, though I still rooted from afar, I could no longer become mentally and emotionally invested in their games’ outcomes, much less their seasons’ results. While others could somehow continue to blindly hope, I simply didn’t have it in me. I had to face the reality of the Snyder era. We were indeed hopeless.

This is what is so hard to process about the Big Cat issue. While fanhood can grow or wain, and it can evolve, real fandom doesn’t just switch. That’s what makes sports fandom what it is. The passion that comes with rooting for your favorite team cannot be forced. It cannot be forged out of thin air. It doesn’t start anew just because we move to a different town. The thrills of victory and agonies of defeat become life-defining moments. Heck, an argument can be made that some fans care more about their team’s results than some players do. Hardcore fandom is irrational to be sure, but real nonetheless.

Big Cat was never presented as an objective sports opinionist. He was supposed to be one of us: a diehard, an emotionally driven consumer and commenter of his teams. But this could not have been the case. Whatever his reasons for becoming a Chicago Sports fan (if that is even true), they are not reasons 99% of sports fans can relate to. What drove people to the likes of Barstool and Big Cat in the first place turned out to be largely a farce.

Does this mean Big Cat is a bad person, or that none of his takes were honest? No. But it does mean that, for the nine years of his podcasting career, while the listeners thought they were getting the sports views and opinions from a lifelong Chicago sports fan, they were getting the voice of something closer to a role-player, a character portrayed through the screens and Wi-Fi signals through which we all consumed, whose actor surely believed in what he was saying while performing, but nonetheless was not being completely honest with his audience.

As one online commenter recently pointed out, every time the PMT crew discussed the Patriots, the underlying truth of what each of them secretly understood was never voiced. I recall Dan, maybe a few weeks ago, referencing the 1985 Bears Super Bowl run as something that happened the year he was born, thus providing him no solace for his current Bears-related agony. But, in reality, his birth year would have been irrelevant. He was born a Patriots fan. Indeed, “his” Bears destroyed his Patriots in the Super Bowl that season. If anything, he’d have memories of family members despising the Bears. As listeners, we’ve been lied to. We’ve been deceived. Everything he has said and done, for better or worse, will now be looked at through that lens.

To be clear, anyone can root for whatever team they want, for whatever reason they want. No one is saying otherwise. But just as most sports fans won’t take other fans seriously if all they do is root for the team that happens to be winning at that time, they wouldn’t relate to a guy who only cheers for the team about which he happens to be blogging or podcasting. Nor should they. This is likely at least part of the reason why Portnoy thought better of coming clean when Big Cat first started writing about Chicago sports. It’s not just that online fans at the time were unusually irrational, it’s that sports fandom, as we all personally know and understand it, doesn’t change with the bouncing of a ball or the start of a new job. It is, at some point in our lives, engrained into the fabric of our being.

Perhaps this is part of why fans of PMT, The Yak and of Big Cat are so dismayed by the recent news. That something so important to them was represented by someone who likely experienced his fanhood very differently than his listeners (if at all) is a hard truth to swallow. So much of PMT was and is about the hosts’ and supporting casts’ team loyalties. If the biggest draw of that show’s fandom was misrepresented, or worse, what does this say about the listeners?

The most loyal listeners will surely continue tuning in. They’ll turn a blind eye to it, or otherwise downplay its significance. Others will likely continue to listen, though through a new lens of skepticism and cynicism, perhaps eventually no longer able to stomach what may start to look like a complete act. And, yes, a certain sect of AWL’s have sworn off Big Cat and his shows forever, not being able to forgive the perceived betrayal.

While sports fandom is supposed to be forever, fandom of a particular person or his content doesn’t require that same level of loyalty. While I’ll never root for another professional football franchise other than the one that resides in the nation’s capital, I can’t say the same about tuning out my current favorite podcast. The bond that unites all fans, even those who root for our most despised rivals, runs deep. For many Big Cat fans and followers, that bond has been broken because, apparently, there was never a real bond to begin with.

Yes, as eluded to previously, sports fandom is irrational. To root for a team is to root for an abstract concept whose players, coaches, and even owners eventually change. As Jerry Seinfeld once quipped, sports fans ultimately “root for laundry”, meaning the colors and logos on the uniforms are the one thing that doesn’t change about a team. For me, as a Washington Redskins/Football Team/Commanders fan, even the laundry hasn’t stayed the same. Why we stay so loyal to our teams, despite the disconnect from anything we could ever call tangible, is impossible to logically justify. This fact is often pointed out by Big Cat on Pardon My Take, and is a large part of the show’s comedic spin that they put on sports talk.

While it’s true that sports fandom is, in the ultimate sense, a comedically pointless endeavor, so is everything in that regard. Ironically, this is at least partially why we cling to this idea of sports teams, why we link our happiness to the success of athletes whose talents we only wish we had, why we buy jerseys of our favorite players, and why we become fans of the teams that our parents were fans of. It’s also why we love to listen to others of the same ilk express what only hardcore sports fans could understand.

The argument that since Big Cat didn’t jump to a more successful organization somehow lessens the blow (the “why would he choose to suffer?” argument) doesn’t make much sense either. It only seems to show that, if anything, he wasn’t much of a New England sports fan to begin with. On Monday’s pod, Big Cat himself said he wasn’t really a diehard Patriots fan. That’s also unrelatable. Most fans can’t relate to being wishy-washy about which team they root for, to only then become fanatical about a certain team or sports town while in their twenties. Also, though donning the jersey of Tom Brady, as a picture that’s been posted online since Monday’s podcast portrays, doesn’t necessarily make someone a die-hard Patriots fan, it certainly doesn’t go well with his recent explanation.

To his credit, Dan admitted that he felt shame about his Johnny-come-lately Chicago fanhood, and that he is, by nature, a “people pleaser”. That’s something I can relate to personally. Being a people pleaser makes a person astutely aware of other people’s positions. It’s likely a large part of why Dan has been so successful. He can get on anyone’s level. He, along with PFT can interview people that they disagree with, and even people about whom they’ve made comically disparaging remarks, and still find lots of common ground. It can then be understandable that, what started as a “white lie” of sorts snowballed into something that neither Dan nor Barstool knew how to address appropriately. I can only imagine that Dan felt some relief by getting (at least more of) the truth out in the open. Still, there was never an apology that came out of his mouth on Monday’s podcast. It was only an explanation of how it all came to be, and an acknowledgement that he should have never been ashamed of his relatively newly found fanhood.

At this point, it’s up to the listeners to decide how much this matters. I’ve gone back and forth on it, personally. I generally see Big Cat as a sincere and honest guy. I don’t think you can fake a personality. I’ve also considered that it’s possible to come into genuine fanhood in ways that are unconventional, perhaps in a way that I simply cannot comprehend. But it’s hard not to see this as more of a career move than anything else. As he quickly rose to Barstool’s biggest draw, him being another Patriots fan (just like Portnoy) would not have been great for content. Essentially, we have to decide whether or not we believe his fanhood is real. If we don’t, it might be too much to get over. If we do, there’s still the aspect of deception to all of it.

I remember listening, several years ago, to Colin Cowherd talk about how he left his sports fanhood behind him once he became a sports journalist; that he doesn’t root for teams, but rather for stories. I found this ivory tower attitude about sports completely off-putting and unrelatable. I found it even more infuriating when he was suddenly receiving congratulations from his ESPN co-workers when suddenly his Seahawks won the Super Bowl. Cowherd was unrelatable until he was a hypocrite. Dan Katz was relatable until the truth came out. Now, in all honesty, I’m not sure what to think.