Pardon My Book

When Two Twitter Accounts Meet: An Internet Love Story

Overview

An origin story usually begins with a chance meeting in person, but the internet offers connections that are disembodied and easily dismissed. How does a relationship that starts as two strangers trading jokes online become the foundation of a partnership worth telling? That uncertainty hangs over every digital first encounter.

The origin story is not romantic: a Barstool Sports blogger and a freelance SB Nation writer slid into each other's Twitter DMs in 2013 and proposed making jokes together. Nothing was planned; the podcast came later. Fans kept accusing each man of stealing the other's jokes, but neither was copying. Their humor simply ran parallel, aligning on everything from Big Ben's injuries to trolling bigger accounts. They finally met on a semi-blind date in Chicago, since PFT was still anonymous, and their first riff was the Cal Ripken steroid question: everyone from 90s baseball had been crucified, so why did the iron man never face scrutiny?

Key Takeaways

• The joke-stealing accusations were a misreading of two comedians who independently converged on the same absurd angles, not evidence of copying.
• Their entire operation began as an unplanned experiment in making each other laugh, with the podcast arriving only as a byproduct of that impulse.
• The Cal Ripken exchange crystallized their shared comedic principle: no sports figure, however iconic, should escape the kind of scrutiny applied to lesser stars.
• PFT's anonymity did more than protect his identity; it forced their first meeting to be a genuine test of whether the on-screen chemistry could survive face-to-face.

30 Hours in 1985

Overview

Two people on opposite sides of an open media war keep sneaking off to hang out anyway. The problem is not whether their friendship survives the rivalry. The puzzle is what a thirty-hour gap between birthdays has to do with the start of something neither side saw coming.

The First Meet-Up

A Chicago meet-up ended with the two hosts swapping DMs for actual texts, which made the friendship feel legitimate, and they agreed to make content together. Earlier they had riffed on a mock podcast about Cal Ripken and steroids, joking they would ignore the Mitchell report and the sudden acne and braces of 1990s sluggers.

Super Bowl 49

Their second meeting came at Super Bowl 49 in Arizona, the Seahawks-Patriots game with Malcolm Butler's interception. PFT was credentialed for SB Nation, part-time and anonymous; Big Cat was with Barstool, which was attending its first Super Bowl as a four-man crew, including Dave Portnoy and Hank, working out of a cheap Scottsdale Airbnb for the Rundown. Barstool was openly hostile with Deadspin and similar sites, but PFT ignored colleagues who dismissed Barstool as misogynists.

The Birthday Discovery

At the party, PFT didn't realize it was Big Cat's 30th birthday, and Big Cat didn't know PFT's was the next day. Big Cat was born January 30, 1985 at 2:11 am; PFT on January 31 at 8:15 am. Thirty hours separate them, with one day when Big Cat existed on earth before PFT. That, they realized, was the literal birth of their number one sports podcast, a coincidence that feels absurd now that they are professionally bound together.

Dave and Hank

PFT met Dave, who responded to Big Cat's explanation that PFT misspells intentionally with "Huh?" Dave trusted Big Cat's instincts. Later, at a club near the Gronkowski brothers' table, Big Cat and Dave were ordered to put their shirts back on, a rule that applied only to fat men, not the six-packs. Hank and PFT's first notable exchange involved smell-testing a bag of cocaine.

Key Takeaways

• The move from DMs to text messages, paired with a joking podcast about Cal Ripken and steroids, was the real seed of what became a professional partnership.
• Their Super Bowl 49 meeting brought together two tiny operations: SB Nation’s part-time anonymous credential and Barstool’s four-man debut out of a cheap Scottsdale Airbnb.
• The podcast’s origin is a biological fluke: Big Cat entered the world thirty hours before PFT, a gap that now reads as destiny but was pure coincidence.
• Dave’s instant trust in Big Cat and the absurd shared moment of smell-testing a bag of cocaine established the tone of the crew that would later define their careers.

Blogs With Balls

Overview

Two colleagues arrive at a conference expecting the validation that will justify their careers. Instead, one leaves humiliated by a noncommittal employer, the other publicly attacked for the brand he loves. The future they had counted on collapses in the same room, and what happens next depends on how they respond.

A party truce

At a party, Big Cat and Hank handed PFT a bump of cocaine, and he took it. That settled things for Big Cat: PFT had partied with them, so he could never trash Barstool among his SB Nation friends. The book pauses to urge readers to test their drugs and stay safe, then notes that passing a bag around on their thirtieth birthdays at a club with the Gronkowski brothers (not the famous one, who was roughly 200 feet away) qualified as probably the coolest moment of their lives.

The conference

Blogs with Balls ran yearly from 2009 into the mid-2010s, officially a pioneering conference series uniting sports bloggers, new media professionals, and journalists to discuss the evolving sports media landscape. Its real purpose was to make bloggers feel important and legitimate while television, newspapers, and radio still dominated. The conference proved the catalyst for PFT joining Barstool and for Pardon My Take starting.

Shattered expectations

Before Chicago, PFT still worked part-time at SB Nation, among its most talented writers yet without a full-time offer. Big Cat was in a quarter-life crisis: he loved Barstool, but the site earned no respect, and while Dave picked fights with other outlets, Big Cat's efforts to befriend them always failed. PFT attended as an audience member; Big Cat sat on a panel. PFT came expecting a dinner with SB Nation's higher-ups to produce a full-time job offer; Big Cat expected his panel to win over skeptical media types. Both expectations collapsed.

The dinner and the ambush

At the dinner, SB Nation praised PFT's work but said there was no budget for full-time. In hindsight it reads like a draft blunder, on the level of Sam Bowie over Michael Jordan or Darko Miličić over Carmelo Anthony. PFT arrived at the conference deflated. Big Cat's panel, meant to cover the future of sports blogging, became an ambush on Barstool and misogyny, with everything on trial:

• "Guess That Ass"
• Smokeshow of the Day
• offensive humor in general

Key Takeaways

• Blogs with Balls functioned less as a media conference than as a ritual of legitimacy, conferring importance on bloggers while the traditional outlets still called the shots.
• The shared cocaine moment at the party was more than a birthday anecdote; it turned a potential critic into a participant and made future attacks unthinkable.
• Both PFT and Big Cat arrived in Chicago expecting the conference to validate their career paths, and both left having to confront that the old media world was not ready to take them seriously.
• SB Nation's refusal to offer PFT a full-time role at that dinner now looks like the kind of personnel blunder franchises spend years regretting.

The Chernin Deal

Overview

The biggest hurdle was money: the company had momentum but not the financial backing to expand. A path forward existed, but only if the right partner could be found without compromising what made the operation what it was.

A Grilling

Grilled on a Blogs with Balls panel, PFT and Big Cat each saw he'd never fit in: PFT as talent at a journalism-minded blog, Big Cat in media's inner club. Success meant their own terms, which seeded Pardon My Take.

The Sale

Money blocked the hire. In August 2015 Dave Portnoy flew Big Cat to a New York dinner with KFC. Barstool would sell only to a buyer who left it unchanged. Peter Chernin's firm fit. Its backing and a New York move would push past blogging into daily video and podcasts. KFC had started KFC Radio, betting podcasting would pay, featuring Big Cat.

Key Takeaways

• The exclusion PFT and Big Cat faced from established media was not a dead end but the condition that forced them to build an independent format.
• Barstool's sale to Peter Chernin's firm succeeded only because the agreement made non-interference a hard condition, not a courtesy.
• The New York move and new investment did more than supply capital; they turned a blogging operation into a daily production house for video and audio content.
• KFC Radio's early bet on podcasting supplied the proof that shifted the expanded company's priorities toward audio as a core revenue stream.