What happens when Dave Portnoy puts the Chicago Bears at No. 1 on his list of the NFL’s most overly emotional, irrational, sensitive, insecure fanbases and only fills in one of five slots?
Portnoy’s been teasing a Monday segment for Wake Up Barstool, and this is the pitch he posted to go with it:
https://twitter.com/stoolpresidente/status/2102822063950201340
Bears at No. 1. Slots two through five sitting empty. One question underneath it all: who am I missing? Nine hundred replies and counting later, apparently half the league wants that spot for themselves.
Portnoy didn’t just rank the Bears, he dared everyone else to argue they belong in the empty slots instead. A real ranking ships with five names filled in. This one shipped with one name and an open invitation, which is exactly why it’s pulling more engagement today than most actual NFL news. Arguing your fanbase suffers worse than the next guy’s doesn’t require you to defend your team’s record. Nobody has to be right. They just have to be loud, and four open slots gives everybody a reason to show up.
Portnoy picked the Bears first for a reason, and it isn’t random. This is the same Caleb Williams who put together a 59-point outburst earlier this season, and Portnoy still went after him over his reaction to a hamstring injury, calling it borderline theatrical on Wake Up Barstool. Williams responded by reposting a claim that Portnoy once got a kid arrested and expelled from school, and Portnoy shot that down, explaining the kid was actually the one who threw something at him on camera during a pizza review that went viral, signing off with “Play stupid games win stupid prizes.”
Throw in Portnoy calling the Bears “absolutely humiliated” after their loss to the Lions and this stops looking like random engagement farming. The guy’s got an actual grudge.
That doesn’t make him a neutral judge, though. Portnoy’s own track record of losing his composure over sports reads like an audition tape for slot No. 2 on his own list. He’s allowed to hand out the insult. He’s just not allowed to pretend he’d pass the same test.
My mom keeps sports radio on all day at the dental office where she works, and even she’d clock this as the most predictable move in the Barstool playbook: pick the fanbase that’s already the loudest online, leave the blanks empty, and let a thousand replies write Monday’s segment for you.
Four spots left. Hundreds of nominations already sitting in the replies. Portnoy’s not filling in a single one before Monday.
