Francis Ellis has never been a stranger to catching heat at Barstool, and this week it's happening again — this time over something said on his own show, Son of a Boy Dad. Ellis, the Barstool Idol Season 1 winner and former Harvard lacrosse captain, has built the podcast into one of the company's steadier hits alongside co-hosts Adam Ferrone (Rone) and Harry Settel (Lil Saz) since joining forces in 2024. But according to posts circulating this week, something out of a recent episode did not sit well with people inside Barstool's New York office.
Apparently people in the New York office were not happy with Francis after seeing this clip
What exactly triggered the New York office isn't spelled out anywhere in what's circulating — just that the reaction was strong enough to become its own storyline. That's the nature of Barstool's internal blowups: they play out in public before anyone outside the building knows the actual details, and fans are left piecing it together from the reaction alone rather than the source.
That's exactly the spot Dante found himself in. He wasn't even on the podcast — he just tweeted the clip out — and still ended up fielding backlash of his own from the same New York crowd. Rather than let it sit, Dante posted a direct response addressing the pushback.
Dante responds to the backlash he got from the people in New York after he tweeted this
It's a familiar pattern for Barstool's internal culture — a piece of content ripples out from one office, gets amplified by clip accounts, and suddenly the guy who shared it is fielding the same heat as the guy who said it. Ellis has been through Barstool controversy cycles before; he was fired from the company in 2019 over a blog post and rejoined in 2022, eventually landing back on his feet with Son of a Boy Dad. Whether this latest flare-up blows over the same way likely depends on whether Francis himself weighs in, or whether the New York office lets it die on its own.