Barstool's crew ran it back with a new fictional draft, this time pulling from every sport that isn't football, basketball, baseball or hockey. The concept sounds simple: pick the most iconic athletes from golf, tennis, track, gymnastics, boxing, whatever else counts. In practice it turned into the usual chaos, with picks getting dissected and defended in real time on the timeline.
The results graphic dropped and the debate over who actually won the draft kicked off immediately.
That recap graphic became its own storyline before anyone even got to the merits of the picks. It didn't take long for the format itself to get roasted, with one reply straight up asking who put the thing together.
The graphic got dragged before the actual draft debate even started.
Once the shots at the artwork settled down, the real argument was about the board itself. Rico Bosco went to bat hard for Kerri Strug, who's about as locked-in a pick as this category gets. Her vault on a badly injured ankle at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics is one of the signature moments in American Olympic history, a 9.712 that clinched team gold for the Magnificent Seven and left her unable to compete in the individual finals she'd already qualified for.
@DogWalkBarstool @BarstoolChief @Blutman27 @barstoolWSD @EddieBarstool Carrie Strug !!!!! She was an American hero spell the name right
Not every pick needed that kind of defense, since some of the board's better value picks spoke for themselves. Jeff D. Lowe pointed out that grabbing Usain Bolt, the fastest man to ever live and an 8-time Olympic gold medalist, at pick 10 overall is close to draft-day theft in a category this deep.
@DogWalkBarstool @BarstoolChief @Return_Of_RB @Blutman27 @barstoolWSD @EddieBarstool Usain Bolt is a crazy steal 10th Overall my goodness.
Then there's Eddie, who took the bit route with a quill pen at the All-Star Game and is now taking his victory lap over it. It's a joke pick dressed up as vindication, the kind of thing that only makes sense in the context of a fictional draft where the board can get as weird as you want it to.
That's the appeal of these drafts in the first place. There's no box score to argue over, no stats to fact-check, just a bunch of Barstool accounts staking claims on athletes and daring each other to disagree. The graphic gets clowned, the picks get defended, and somehow that's the whole show. Expect the next iteration to run it back with an even messier board.