Barstool Sports is arguably bigger than it has ever been, with a Fox Sports deal and disciples in every corner of sports media. That means its top talent are as prominent and putting as much content as ever. One of those stars, Dan “Big Cat” Katz, is already looking forward to when he can recede from the spotlight.
After years as a younger punching bag at Barstool, Katz launched the Pardon My Take podcast with Eric “PFT Commenter” Sollenberger and producer Hank Lockwood in 2016. It quickly became Barstool’s most well-known show and popularized the brand’s approach to sports talk.
These days, Big Cat works in Barstool management and is the face of several additional shows including the daily live chat show The Yak as well as Wake Up Barstool and the Barstool College Football Show, which are key parts of Barstool’s Fox partnership. It’s a lot for one host.
Big Cat revealed in a recent episode of the Green Light with Chris Long podcast that within the next half-decade, he expects to “wind down” his role as a primary face of Barstool content in order to focus more on PMT.
“I think there will be a time in the next, I will say, let’s call it two to four years that I will start to wind down a little bit,” Katz said. “Right now, I don’t have free time. I just don’t. The amount of stuff I have to do, all the shows I have to do, it’s kind of ridiculous. Because I’m pulled in a million different directions. And I also do think there’s, like, an overexposure factor. Like I don’t think anyone wants to listen to me this much.”
Still one of the top sports podcasts on YouTube and all audio platforms with a loyal legion of fans, PMT is Katz’s favorite project and clearly the most successful of the shows he hosts. Katz has no intentions to stop hosting the podcast any time soon.
“The winding down will be to just do Pardon My Take. So that, I think that will give me the juice to keep it going for longer,” Katz added. “And I honestly, I know it sounds ridiculous, but I will do this show for as long as PFT and Hank want to do this show. Because the alternative is inviting PFT over to my house on Sundays and watching games with him and doing the podcast with no microphones. Because I love watching ball with him. I love them.”
A media veteran and a family man these days, Big Cat is starting to think about the rest of his career. The Chicago sports fanatic acknowledged that he worries sometimes about being the old man at a young man’s company, chasing a young audience, but said that he will be comfortable so long as there is still a swath of people who love PMT.
“Now I think I’m at a point where if we’re doing this in five, ten years let’s say, there will probably be some people who will make fun of us and be like, ‘These guys are old and out of touch,” Katz said. “But if we still have a core audience, what the f*ck do I care?”
Barstool isn’t going anywhere, and PMT remains the most well-known show on the network. As he discussed in the interview with Long, the PMT audience is aging along with him as well.
Katz concluded by projecting that he could eventually stop hosting PMT when his children graduate high school and move into adulthood, when he might look toward retirement. Until then, Katz appears to have a gameplan to reduce his hosting duties at Barstool and stick with his main responsibilities at the company.
About Brendon Kleen
Brendon is a Media Commentary staff writer at Awful Announcing. He has also covered basketball and sports business at Front Office Sports, SB Nation, Uproxx and more.