Media Beef: Dave Portnoy vs. Jason Whitlock

Dave Portnoy and Jason Whitlock went at it on various social media channels on Tuesday after Whitlock published a column about Portnoy on The Blaze. The column compared Portnoy and recently-banned-from-social-media misogynist Andrew Tate to Al Capone and Lucky Luciano, but not in a good way. The impetus for the column being that Portnoy had an internet fight the day before with Whitlock's fellow Blaze provocateur Alex Stein.

I know. I know. If Portnoy had started a Boston-centric science blog all those years ago we could ignore all of this, but he's probably the second-most successful sports blogger ever so here I am telling you about a guy who goes to city council meetings to complain about a bad weekend in Las Vegas. The video of Stein doing this was shared on Barstool's main Twitter account, before it was removed because gambling regulators don't like that type of content. Those are Portnoy's words.

Anyway, this sparked a flame war between Barstool and far-right trolls that lasted most of the day and night. Eventually, Portnoy logged off after declaring himself the winner.

The next day Whitlock dropped his column where he said that Barstool was woke and called Stein a "truly fearless internet disruptor."

Portnoy then pulled out the receipts from the time Whitlock said "Dave Portnoy, the founder of Barstool Sports... Is the the most important person in sports right now?" Whitlock had championed Portnoy's ability to say what he wanted and added, "Dave Portnoy, what he built at Barstool Sports inspired me." This was in December 2021.

Undeterred, Whitlock then invited Stein on his YouTube show. The episode's title was, "What happened to Dave Portnoy?" Watch at your own risk. In the meantime, here's what Whitlock said in his column:

Portnoy built a sports media empire pretending to be a fearless ESPN disruptor standing against the wokefication of sports and American culture. It’s now clear he’s a total fraud and sellout. His lone interests are money and access to barely legal women. He sold Barstool to a gambling company for hundreds of millions of dollars, and now Barstool is every bit as woke as ESPN.

Portnoy's latest response is a press release about the greatness of Dave Portnoy in which he drops a "Fat Jason Whitlock."