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July 11, 2026 / 12:28 PM EDT
/ CBS News
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Dave Portnoy has built a business empire on his viral pizza reviews and brash social media personality. Now, the "Barstool Sports" creator is looking back on his journey to the top in his new memoir, "Cancel Me If You Can." Long before he started ranking pizzas across the country, Portnoy decided to quit a sales job he hated and start his own media enterprise. That project was the early iteration of "Barstool Sports." At the time, the publication was a four-page sports newspaper, which Portnoy passed out for free. "I didn't care if I was working, you know, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week; it was better than doing what I was doing," Portnoy told CBS Saturday Morning. "Every day, I felt like we were making tiny steps. They may be (a) reader one day, and we went to two the next." The goal of "Barstool Sports," then and now, is to "be honest and authentic to readers," Portnoy said. To build the company that did that, Portnoy hired talented people and let them run wild. One of those hires was Alex Cooper, who would go on to create the hit podcast "Call Her Daddy." Portnoy said he wanted "Barstool Sports" to be like "Saturday Night Live" — a place where great talent could be established and developed.
