In this week's P.O. Box:
Episode 1 premiere on tap
Hot best ball summer begins
After Dark w/ JJ Zachariason
Book Club: An advanced spider civilization
It’s been a month since we announced So You Think You Can Tout—the fantasy football reality show idea I’ve been obsessed with since the offseason got underway.
We opened up a form for submissions, spent way too much time defining a “Truth Serum” taek, watched various beefs unfold between applicants, and got feedback from a TV exec who had previously worked on reality shows like American Idol and So You Think You Can Dance.
It’s been an awesome runway for the show and the early engagement has surpassed my expectations.
But the real fun starts today.
At 1pm ET, Episode 1—Pat Mayo doesn’t think you can tout (savage reviews)—will live premiere on the So You Think You Can Tout YouTube channel:
It’s 98 minutes of submission roasts (and the occasional compliment) from Pat Mayo, who was born for the role of fantasy football’s Simon Cowell (and even busted out the tight black shirt for the show).
A huge shout out to the editing team—Chris, Zach, and Lou—for putting in a ton of hours this week to help get this thing ready for public consumption. It was carefully crafted to get us off on the right foot.
More details (and fan voting) will be announced soon, but for now enjoy the chaos of us reviewing 40+ submissions from tout hopefuls—some of whom got the juice…and plenty who definitely do not.
🤑 Best Ball Mania VII Launches
Hot Best Ball summer officially got underway on Monday with the launch of Best Ball Mania and a handful of other contests.
I like that BBMVII is pretty similar to BBMVI with just a few tweaks to the playoff pods.
Best Ball Breakfast debuted its new lineup featuring Adam Levitan, Sam Sherman, and Pat Kerrane. We had 900 people watching live at one point and the stream just cleared 10k views. The best ball space continues to explode.
We spent the rest of the week strategizing and drafting:
Mark Dank from ETR shared how the projections sausage gets made on Off & On The Clock (spoiler: it’s ok to trust your gut sometimes)
The Swolecast got back in the drafting saddle as well and Davis revealed some hilarious drafting habits.
ADP Chasing did the heavy lifting on all of the new ADP movement. Mike Schopp (national anthem duties) was inactive.
On Ship Chasing, we did a different kind of draft and power ranked the best rookie ADP values on the board right now. It was both a fun and depressing exercise considering the strength of this 2026 class.
And the Bash got off to a rocky start with production and technical difficulties, but we still managed two fun drafts with former guests, HooHames and Ralisch.
In the Fantasy Life Newsletter, we tried to spinzone why these bad landing spots could actually be a blessing in disguise, laughed at the Niners front office, lamented the QB battle in Cleveland, and tried to be realistic about Jadarian Price’s early season outlook in Seattle.
Misc. notes.
Thank you to everyone who passed along kind words about my Grandpa. The service was really moving and I had a nice time with family in Michigan.
Huge h/t to Rooney who tipped me off in the chat yesterday to Boston Hyrox tickets going on sale. I definitely would have missed this had it not been for this reminder, but I secured my ticket for the competition in October. ICYMI, this was one of my goals for 2026.
We officially have some details for our 2026 Ship Chasing meet-up. We’ll be in Austin, Texas the first weekend of August (8/1-8/2) for drafting and some fun in the water. A form for interest has been shared with Ship Chasing YouTube members in both the Discord and on YouTube.
After Dark returns tonight with JJ Zachariason. We’ll discuss rookies, dad life, and the recent revelation that he never uses a mouse at his computer. Want access to After Dark shows on the weekend & a private DFS Discord channel? Become a Best Ball Value Hounds member on Youtube.
🕷 Book #3 for April (35%): Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Still really enjoying this, but just haven’t had as much reading time as I would like. The introduction of Bianca has been fun.
I will say, it’s impossible not to read this while constantly thinking about our own current backdrop of rapid AI acceleration and political demigods. Eat Arbys, etc.
💀 Book #2 for February (COMPLETED): Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
🧱 Book #1 for January (COMPLETED): The City and Its Uncertain Walls by Haruki Murakami.
Got a question for me? Reply to this e-mail and I’ll get back to you…