Ryen Russillo doesn’t think his move to Barstool Sports will change his podcast. The feed will change, but the show won’t.
That’s been Russillo’s message since August, when it was first reported he’d be leaving The Ringer after six years to launch a new venture backed by Barstool founder Dave Portnoy. He repeated it again on Pardon My Take, telling hosts Dan Katz (Barstool Big Cat) and Eric Sollenberger (PFT Commenter) that listeners shouldn’t expect some dramatic shift in content just because the Barstool logo will be attached to his name starting Nov. 3.
“To me, it’s the exact same show,” Russillo said on Wednesday’s episode of PMT. “It’s three days a week. We may change up some of the release times a little bit, because maybe some of those later Friday ones that were coming out kind of late — especially if it’s hitting the East Coast at 5 o’clock in the afternoon on a Friday — isn’t the optimum time to drop new stuff. But yeah, probably a little bit more active on a couple of other things. I’ve been doing this a long time… If anything, it’d be exhausting to try to be somebody different.”
The entire point of Russillo’s move was owning his podcast feed. Spotify kept The Ryen Russillo Podcast feed when he left The Ringer, meaning he’s starting from scratch with a new feed and new YouTube channel. That’s standard practice in the industry now, but it’s also what made staying at Spotify untenable for Russillo if he wanted to build something he actually owned.
“The feed issue is a big reason why,” Russillo explained. “When you go to market, and luckily you guys never really have to because you’re so powerful, but when you start walking into these meetings and it’s like, ‘Where’s your feed?’ and I don’t have my feed, it’s massive. It’s a massive, massive difference. Luckily, this time around, any new place I was talking to was like, ‘OK, we can figure out a way to get you your feed after a certain amount of time.'”
Russillo’s arrangement with Barstool remains somewhat murky. Portnoy said in September that Russillo would be a Barstool employee but also described it as a “partnership,” noting that Russillo has interests beyond podcasting that Barstool would support. Front Office Sports initially reported that Portnoy would be investing in Russillo’s new digital production company, which would house the podcast. Either way, the 50-year-old gets more control over his content than he had at Spotify.
Steve Ceruti and Kyle Crichton are making the move with him. Both worked on Russillo’s Ringer podcast and became regular voices on the show’s “Life Advice” segments. Crichton previously produced The Bill Simmons Podcast and happens to be Simmons’s nephew. Ceruti was a senior podcast manager at The Ringer and co-hosted The Ringer Soccer Show before joining Russillo’s show.
The online response to his Barstool move played out exactly as Russillo expected, because it was the same response he got when he left ESPN seven years ago.
“The last week has been a bit of a reminder,” he said. “When I left ESPN and went to The Ringer and then Spotify, it was like the second I started putting out content, ‘Here we go, now that he’s not at ESPN anymore.’ I’m literally the exact same person. And so it was a nice little reminder seven years later that it’s happening all over again. Like you say, one nice thing about Sabrina Carpenter, and it’s like, ‘Oh, he fits in perfectly with Portnoy.’ Weirdo.”
This has been Russillo’s reality through multiple job changes. He left ESPN for The Ringer in 2018 and immediately heard people claim his content would change because of the new platform. It didn’t. Now he’s at Barstool, which has a reputation and a frat-house aesthetic that doesn’t exactly scream “Ryen Russillo doing deep NBA analysis.”
But Russillo was already familiar with Barstool’s world. He appeared on Pardon My Take back in 2017, during his ESPN days, the same year ESPN tried to partner with Barstool for Van Talk. That show lasted one episode before ESPN killed it over concerns about Barstool’s content and past comments about Sam Ponder. Russillo later told PMT he watched ESPN’s internal meltdown unfold, with different executives trying to distance themselves from the decision while secretly supporting different factions.
The Barstool relationship isn’t new. It’s just formalized now.
Russillo’s podcast launches Nov. 3. He’s already posted the new feed and told listeners they’ll need to subscribe since nothing from The Ringer feed is coming with him. He’s starting NBA video content on the new YouTube page next week to coincide with the season.
Whether the show actually stays the same depends on what you think “the same” means. The format will be identical — three episodes a week, Life Advice segments, long-form NBA and NFL breakdowns, and the occasional tangent about college roommates or Vermont bar stories. But Russillo will now be part of the Barstool Sports ecosystem, which means cross-promotion on their platforms, potential appearances on Big Noon Kickoff through Barstool’s partnership with FS1, and association with a brand that generates strong reactions from people who either love it or hate it.
Russillo knows that. He’s just betting that his audience doesn’t care about the logo as long as the content stays consistent. Seven years ago, when he left ESPN for The Ringer, he was right. Now he’s testing that theory again.
About Sam Neumann
Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.