The final five on Surviving Barstool went into last night's episode with three idols still in play and a Dave Portnoy-themed challenge behind them, and it ended with Brandon Walker on the outside looking in. Now the show's cast and its loudest fans are picking apart exactly how it happened, and nobody involved seems to agree on who's to blame.
*SPOILERS* The last challenge before the Surviving Barstool finale was INTENSE
Brandon didn't stay quiet for long. He posted that he'd break down his exit on Mostly Sports, and once the episode dropped, the quotes started flying — "I still don't know why he was in the game," and, more pointedly, "Tommy blew it for everybody." It's Brandon's version of events, delivered from behind a podcast mic instead of a tribal council fire.
Brandon’s thoughts on #SurvivingBarstool
Dave Portnoy waded in with the kind of take that was always going to get quoted back at people for days: too many idols, a season that's gotten predictable, but ultimately the eliminated players' own fault for not flushing idols when they had the chance. He singled out Tommy specifically for choking "at almost every turn."
I do think there are too many idols and survivor has been sort of predictable and boring. But there was plenty of opportunities to flush idols and make moves and the people who got eliminated didnt do it. Tommy choked at almost every turn. Its not the remaining players fault they survived. Its the eliminated players for being nitwits
That take rippled through the final five's own accounts almost immediately. Dana Beers, never one to duck a callout, admitted "the competitive version of me is the worst version of me," while Marty Mush pushed back that everyone in the alliance simply had a shot to break it up and didn't take it. Stoolies Clubhouse laid out the full list of missed chances — Feits not taking out Rone, Tate handing Dana the idea to play his idol on Tate, and Marty and Glenny going after Meek and Annika instead of Rone — essentially arguing every single idol-holder had a window to blow the game up before last night and let it pass.
Dana's own contribution to the chaos was a hallway pitch to Brandon that he now openly calls one of the worst Hail Marys in Hail Mary history, thrown up right after Brandon told him he'd never get his vote.
All time dumb dumb stuff from me during that conversation in the hallway with BFW. Tried throwing up a Hail Mary once he said he’d never vote for me. One of the worst Hail Mary attempts in the history of hail Mary’s
There's also a running bit that's somehow bigger than the vote itself: the "Chicago Pride" line, which Gaz called "all time" theater given that Dana is a Boston guy running with a New York alliance, and which had Nicky Smokes claiming actual PTSD symptoms just hearing the phrase again. Whatever it was in the room, it's clearly become the season's inside joke. With three idols already burned and only the final four left standing — Marty Mush, Dana Beers, Rone and Glenny Balls — heading toward the finale, Brandon's exit is shaping up as the moment that decided who's actually left to win it.