Barstool Sports personality Dan “Big Cat” Katz dropped a bombshell revelation this week that left many fans stunned.
Barstool Sports has been a popular national sports brand for years, but it began as a 1-man show with founder Dave Portnoy mostly covering Boston sports. Barstool then started to expand to other cities, such as New York, Philadelphia and Chicago. In each city, there was a lead blogger/personality who was in charge of the regional blog.
In Chicago, Big Cat was the man at the center of the efforts. He would attend Cubs games at Wrigley Field. He lived and died with the Bears. He was who you thought of when it came to Chicago sports. He is synonymous with Chicago sports. And that’s what made his revelation so shocking.
Katz revealed that he grew up a Boston sports fan and only fully switched allegiances to Chicago once he started covering it for work. Big Cat wrote about the story in detail in a lengthy blog post published on Wednesday. He says that he grew up with some family in Chicago and felt ties to the city as a result. Then, after living there post-college and loving it, Katz felt comfortable adopting Chicago sports entirely and abandoning Boston sports for work-purposes.
Katz made the rare switch despite living the first 18 years of his life in Newton, Mass. Boston sports fans are generally among the most passionate and hardcore, so it’s rare for someone to abandon those teams. But that’s what Katz did.
Katz talked about the matter on a Barstool Sports radio show last week after his past was exposed by fellow Barstool radio host Kirk Minihane and Minihane’s fans.
👀👀 @BarstoolBigCat tells all about how he grew up in Massachusetts 👀👀 pic.twitter.com/AXaQSnRJTa
— Viva La Stool (@VivaLaStool) January 9, 2025
“I love the city of Chicago … this is home to me. And I know there will be people like, ‘f–k you, you’re a fraud.’ That’s fine. I’ll deal with it, because now it’s out there,” Katz said on the show. “If you don’t like me from this or you think I’m a fraud, I understand. I know there’s a lot of people who are going to have my back … and I appreciate those people.”
Katz made the revelation to finally get it off his chest on a large scale, though he hasn’t hid his past in previous radio appearances. Katz and Portnoy originally agreed it was best for Big Cat not to talk about his past when starting out with Barstool Sports Chicago after seeing the previous lead blogger get ripped apart for not being from Chicago.
Things ultimately worked out for Katz, Barstool Sports Chicago and Barstool Sports overall in a big way, so they made the right move. But Katz has now decided to completely — and publicly — own this part of his past.
