Brandon Walker's new solo show is still finding its legs, but Thursday night was a real marker: the first full unveiling of the Brandon Walker Top 25, live on YouTube, with Todd McShay pulled in for a quarterback breakdown. Walker built the hype in stages all day, first teasing the rankings, then counting down the final 90 minutes before kickoff.
This isn't some side project. Walker and Kaycee Smith mutually ended their nearly 7-year Unnecessary Roughness podcast last month, and the Brandon Walker College Football Show inherited that show's YouTube channel and socials when it debuted August 3. Walker was clear the split with Smith wasn't personal, just a format change, and Smith is sticking around on Barstool's other football content, including the group show with Walker, Dave Portnoy and Big Cat. A Top 25 unveil with McShay in the guest chair is exactly the kind of marquee moment the new show needed to prove it's more than a rebrand.
The tease leaned into the two biggest storylines in the sport right now. Walker's countdown copy name-dropped Curt Cignetti and Ryan Day, and for good reason — Ohio State opened the year ranked No. 1 in the preseason AP poll for the first time since 2015, while Cignetti's Indiana, fresh off a national title run, sits right behind in the top 6 despite losing Heisman winner Fernando Mendoza to the draft. Any Top 25 reveal this preseason has to reckon with both programs, and Walker made sure his audience knew it before he even hit record.
The reaction rolled in well before the stream even started. Nicky Smokes posted a fired-up bit calling Walker the best speaker since Barack Obama and joking he was ready to "take a molly and head bang" for the whole show, half tribute and half send-up of how seriously the fanbase takes these Top 25 reveals now. Cons chimed in on Walker's original announcement with a jab about not sharing quite the same relationship with McShay that Walker apparently does, poking fun at the buddy energy Walker was bringing into the draft-analyst crossover.
Big Cat, for his part, was busy hyping up Walker's look before any of the football talk even started, joking Walker had "SWAG" and separately posting from the Yak studio about Walker's new hat. It's the usual Barstool background noise around a launch like this — cast members ribbing each other while the actual content builds — but it's also a signal the rest of the building is paying attention to how the new show is landing.
Big Cat clowns Brandon Walker's new hat live from the Barstool Yak studio set.
None of this settles anything on the field, of course. Ohio State still has to prove it can hold a preseason No. 1 spot deep into a season Ryan Day's teams haven't always finished the way expected, and Indiana has to replace a Heisman-winning quarterback with TCU transfer Josh Hoover while trying to defend a top-6 ranking with almost no margin for error. But as a launch pad for Walker's solo show, unveiling the rankings against that backdrop, with McShay lending draft-analyst credibility to the quarterback conversation, was about as strong a debut moment as he could've scripted.