Rico Bosco vs. Ed Brown picks challenge: polo or Final Four

Pick Em has a new side war, and the stakes were set on air. Here are the terms, straight from the show.

Barstool Pick Em

@Barstoolpickem

BOSCO vs ED BROWN Ed wins - he gets to go to the Final Four with Rico and attend the Pumps Rico wins - Ed will wear a polo for an ENTIRE month HIGH STAKES.

Read it again, because it's lopsided. If Ed wins, he gets the Final Four with Rico, plus a night at the Pumps. If Rico wins, Ed has to wear a polo. That's it. On paper, Bosco is risking a road trip and a weekend of his life, and all Ed is risking is a shirt. The Barstool accounts saw that right away and posted the clips with deadpan lines about how much both sides were 'putting on the line.' The joke on the show is that the polo is nowhere near as small a punishment as Bosco thinks. For some guys, a month of collars is a real sentence.

The other clip from the Week 7 episode puts everyone on one screen. The hosts are in their usual boxes and the other side of the bet is on a video call, shot from about the angle you'd expect from someone who doesn't spend much time on video calls.

Viva La Stool

@VivaLaStool

Seems like a fair bet!

This kind of bet suits Rico better than most. He's already spent this season on Pick Em defending himself against claims that he's been hacking into computers to steal picks. Now he's put his own picks against someone from outside the usual 3-man booth, with a Final Four trip riding on it. Lose to Ed in front of the Pick Em audience and the hacking jokes will look tame next to what comes after.

The Final Four prize also lands on Big Cat's turf. He's admitted that college hoops matters to him more than people think. On Wake Up Barstool in late September, he said the non-conference games count in a 30-game season, and he named the stretch he looks forward to most.

Wake Up Barstool

@wakeupbarstool

“So yeah, I do care when college basketball comes back. I do love feast week.” – Big Cat

0:39

The Stoolies have already picked a side. The fan club account went straight into the replies and tagged Ed's own handle to cheer him on. If the internet decides this, Rico might want to start figuring out how to share the Final Four with him.

Stoolies Clubhouse 🏴‍☠️

@StooliesClub

@VivaLaStool @Barstoolpickem @stoolgambling @barstoolsports @Return_Of_RB @BarstoolBigCat @hen_ease Let’s go @edbrown020558!!!

What to watch next: the actual scoreboard. Nobody has said on screen how the picks will be counted or when the challenge starts, so expect Pick Em to fill that in over the next few episodes. Expect plenty of trash talk too. Either way somebody ends up uncomfortable, whether that's Rico explaining the Pumps to Ed at the Final Four or Ed spending a month in a collar.