Friday Four-Pack 7.31.26
Big weekend for Craig Breslow. One NHL teams does something really dumb. WEEI in the news. Drake Maye is good. MutStack Notes!
A Note from MutStack Owner Dave Portnoy
Approved
That was the one-word answer from My Boss Dave on the designs for the MutStack T-shirts.
I reached out for owner approval last week but did not hear back. Dave’s been sick. He hurt his tooth. He’s running a company and building a horse racing empire. I did not want to harass him. And since this is a full-disclosure newsletter…I failed to follow up with him until this (Friday) morning.
Hand up, that’s on me.
So because of that, we’re still in the process of getting the shirts in the Barstool store for the people. That’s the annoying news. The good news is that here next Friday (I think), you’ll see the shirts and be able to buy one if you want.
I like them - they’re on-brand. I wish I was linking you to them today.
Hopefully, here next Friday. #staytuned
I’m going to use the rest of today’s open to simply say that I think Drake Maye is going to have a monster, monster season. Groundbreaking, I know.
He garnered all those MVP votes last year thanks to advanced stats, efficiency, and the team winning a ton of games. He was probably helped by the fact they won a lot more than was predicted.
This year? I think he’s going to go off on those ‘counting stats’ everyone loves. TDs. Passing Yards. Rushing Yards. He got a major receiver room upgrade, has capable running backs, and one of the best OC’s in the game.
I said a few weeks ago here the “buzz” around Gillette was Maye - that’s only gotten louder this week. The team feels like he’s ready to take it to the next level.
From Year 2 to Year 3, Josh Allen went from 20 TDs/9 INTs to 37/10. He went from 3000 passing yards to 4500. I’m talking that kind of leap forward. The kind of leap that gets people talking about Maye as the 3rd best QB in the NFL. It’s coming.
Honorary Mention - TreVeyon Henderson. The stuff they’re going to do with him in the passing game? 🔥🔥🔥
Thanks to 15 in a row and 25 of 30, we have a baseball season. But it’s hard not to start thinking about Pats and Seahawks, Wednesday Night (yep, Wednesday), September 9.
Drake Maye will be great this season. You heard it here first. #courage
Meanwhile, it’s Trade Deadline Weekend. A couple of WEEI items for the people. A terrible media move by a major professional sports team. And your weekly MutStack notes.
All ahead in Friday Four-Pack #182.
Yes, My Boss Dave still owns MutStack. But it remains free to subscribe and have it emailed directly to your inbox every Friday.
100% Free. Still.
On the Red Sox and Trade Deadline Weekend…
Be advised - I have changed my opinion on the biggest need.
More thoughts on the Duran crashout here on the Barstool Blog
On an embarrassing move by the NHL’s Blue Jackets…
This sucks.
The Columbus Blue Jackets are dumping their radio broadcast team. Starting this season, they’ll simulcast the TV broadcast across both TV and radio so that “fans can experience the same live game coverage across TV and radio.”
The problem, of course, is that TV and radio are two different experiences.
I still listen to a lot of play-by-play on the radio because, well, I drive a 2013 Camry and my car doesn’t have Wifi. If it did, maybe I’d just stream the games on a screen. But even then, it’d be delayed, and maybe I don’t want my phone breaking in with a scoring update of a game I’m trying to watch. That happens all the time now, watching the Red Sox on NESN - an app on my phone tells me about a home run a few seconds before it happens. Either way, no Wifi, so plenty of radio games. I also happen to like games on the radio.
Long-winded way of getting to 1. I need a new car. 2. Calling games on the radio is much different than calling a game on TV. On the radio, you have to fill in every detail for the listener, so that they can see the game as you see it. With TV, well, we can all see what you see - it’s your job to add energy, insight, and set up drama. I don’t want my TV doing play-by-play of every little thing happening in the game - that’s too much for the viewer. But the radio listener needs that.
I’m sure the folks at the Columbus Blue Jackets know this - they just don’t freaking care. This is a team recently valued at $1.4 billion with a b dollars. They could afford to carry a radio and TV broadcast - they just don’t want to. From all indications, this is a straight cost-cutting move. There are reports the Blue Jackets will not team up with a regional sports network. Instead, they’ll use the NHL in-house TV production team. Cookie-cutter stuff.
Bob McElligot was the radio voice who was the odd man out in all of this. He’s called their games for 17 years. His son said his dad found out about all of this less than two hours before it all went public. What a joke.
This is not just about Columbus and this one decision - this move should be a warning shot to fans of every team - this type of media consolidation is coming for us all. Private equity will keep trimming away at line items, even if it means losing the personality and color of your favorite team. This is BAD for sports fans everywhere.
A few years ago someone who might know suggested the Red Sox were thinking about doing this, so don’t think this is some mid-market one-off.
This is a huge middle finger to the fans and a terrible way to treat a long-time employee. I had zero feelings about the Columbus Blue Jackets before this - now I hope they lose every game.
I think about images like these a lot - the fact that a lot of the shit being built in 2026 is beige, square, and boring - this move makes me think of that. I hate it.
Sports should have color and personality - a local radio guy provides that. I hope the fans do some sort of boycott in Ohio over this.
This move stinks, and I’m mentally preparing myself for more and more teams doing this in the next decade. You should too.
On a couple of WEEI Items…
No words.
Well, that’s not true.
The Marconi Awards are an annual radio industry award ceremony honoring ‘overall excellence in radio.’ There are about 15 different categories, like LEGENDARY STATION OF THE YEAR, ROCK STATION OF THE YEAR, etc. Winners in each category take home a Marconi Award.
WEEI is one of five stations nominated for SPORTS STATION OF THE YEAR.
They’re nominated along with another Audacy Sports station, WIP in Philadelphia. WIP is sort of like 98.5 The Sports Hub - month after month, book after book, #1 in the market across the board with Men 25-54, the sports radio power demo. They consistently destroy the other sports station in town, 97.5 The Fanatic, in both ratings and relevancy - the way The Hub has dominated WEEI in those two very key categories.
So yeah, I was pretty surprised to see WEEI get a nomination. 2025 was a bad year for Boston’s Sports Original, with its afternoon show rating out as one of the lowest-rated major market shows in the country. Ratings were so bad, in fact, that WEEI torched that show early in 2026. The show they replaced it with is somehow worse than that show, but that’s a different MutStack.
Does the listening audience care about the Marconi? No. To quote my friend Kirk Minihane, “The two things listeners care about the least are Marconi Awards and anything Jason Barrett writes.” It’s a radio-industry private-parts measuring contest. WEEI’s nomination says more about the potential influence of Audacy’s new owner and left-wing super activist George Soros and his Soros Fund Management than it does WEEI.
More than a few radio pros believe that the Marconi Awards just take turns passing around the winners to stations and ownership groups that need them and their potential industry buzz. The voters for the award are kept secret, reportedly “Composed of an anonymous, independent body of prominent radio industry professionals, general managers, and broadcasters.” Yeah.
WEEI was beaten by rival 98.5 in all three major day-parts in every ratings book of 2025. In some cases, doubled and tripled up in those ratings. WEEI does a good job raising money for cancer research with the Jimmy Fund Radio Telethon, but they do that every year. I’d love to know what else the voters looked at to come up with them as a finalist.
If you’re WIP, it has to cheapen the nomination knowing that WEEI is also in the final five.
Like I said, win or lose, the audience won’t care. But people do care about the ratings. And so do hosts. And producers.
Last week, The Greg Hill Show mentioned on their show that they were #1 in the ratings. In the very public Men 25-54 numbers, they were not close to #1. In fact, they were 6th with a 6.0. Rival Sports Hub was at #1 at 16.1. WZLX was #2 at 8.8. We had these numbers, and so did others.
So listeners in the show’s Twitch chat started asking questions. One of them posted their own email in the show’s chat and asked if they were really #1, then someone should prove it. It’s a public show chat, and many people reportedly saw the back-and-forth.
Producer Chris Curtis reportedly did, emailing a stranger the ratings sheet above, which the listener posted publicly on Substack’s Notes feature - it was a nice break from all the terrible posts I usually see there.
It does indeed show The Greg Hill Show #1 - but among Men 18-34, for the 2026 Spring Book. Good for them - it’s just not the demo that sports radio is graded on. I don’t think it’s ever been. I just think it’s funny to think about emailing the ratings to a random on a show chat to prove a point. Maybe they feel like they should be getting more recognition from their own company and bosses for being #1 in Men 18-34? They might have a fair point.
I don’t know. It made me laugh - as I’m told the Marconi nomination made some radio folks in Boston (and beyond) laugh.
On your weekly MutStack Notes…
⚾ Sox! We’ll go live for Dirty Water - A Boston Sports Podcast later today. 2 PM ET. Sox, Duran, trades and more. Look for the live link here or here.
🎙️ Regarding those spring ratings for The Greg Hill Show, down 23% from 2025 among Men 25-54, I’m told at least one executive high up at Audacy points to Courtney Cox’s absence, as he was away on maternity leave. Cox returned to the show full-time this week.
➡️ Yes, I have seen the Tomy Romo video. I do not have a comment.
🎙️ With the Red Sox the hottest team in baseball, it’s at least a little weird that WEEI has not used Lou Merloni more on its shows. Are they annoyed he left radio for a more prominent role as the No. 1 color guy on NESN? Little weird, no?
🔥 Well here we go. I’m going to write more about this next week, but the new season of Surviving Barstool is set to debut next Sunday. I’m not in the trailer, but I can confirm I was there to act as referee for my coworkers (and Glenny Balls) battling for $250k. I think people are going to love it. More next week here before the Sunday Night Premiere.
🏀 I had thought about Nick Soares - best known as Cinema Lords to KMS listeners and his basketball teammates - more than a few times over the last few weeks. During the World Cup. Then with Survivor coming up, The Odyssey and Spider-Man getting so much buzz…I don’t know; these are things he loved and had real passion for, and he just kept randomly popping into my thoughts. Then Kirk mentioned that today would have been his birthday. Thinking of his friends and family today - so full of life and taken from us way too young.
🍕 Milano’s Pizza in Nashua was a frequent pizza source for the Friday Night Lights - High School Football in Action show, so nice to see them get a good score from Dave. The place that people keep buzzing about locally is Epigram Brewing in Tyngsboro, and their bar-style pizza.
🦁 Thanks to the Lowell Sun for the recap of the Chelmsford Lions 10U Cal Ripken team and their journey to the Cal Ripken World Series. The crew is off to Virginia next week and will take on the 10U team from Mexico in Game 1. Kids have worked so hard to be one of 28 teams in the world playing next week in this prestigious event. Proud of the players and coaches and can’t wait to see them in action in Stafford, VA!
That feels like enough Stack for this week.
Back tomorrow on the Barstool Blog to talk Jim Dandy Day and Saratoga.
Good luck with all the bets this weekend. Thanks for reading. And watching.
I hope the Mexican team is from Zihuatanejo.