The ‘Pardon My Take’ 10th anniversary book seemingly was not edited at all

The hosts of Pardon My Take are out with a book this week celebrating the 10th anniversary of their massively popular and influential podcast.

Some of the book tells the story of the show and its role in turning Barstool Sports into a juggernaut in the industry, including the podcast’s ill-fated late-night ESPN television adaptation.

The book also features short dispatches from many of the show’s top recurring guests and connections in sports and media, including Joe Buck, J.J. Watt and Dave Portnoy’s father. The rest of it is “Extracurriculars,” or short lists and ramblings that evoke the spirit of early Barstool blogs.

Unfortunately for anyone who picks up the book, that spirit also transfers to the book’s impressive lack of editing. “Pardon My Book” was published by Harper, a prominent and well-regarded imprint, but it’s hard to tell whether anyone at the company took a pass at the copy of the book at any point.

Barstool’s biggest stars dispensed with proper capitalization, punctuation, spelling, and even proper formatting to ring in their big anniversary. Of course, it is an apt way to celebrate a show that was built on those early blogs and the sensibilities of doofus sports diehards — and has a cohost whose whole shtick was satirizing early-internet NFL fans’ ridiculous posting habits.

“We’ve sent this book and some god-awful writing out into the universe,” Dan “Big Cat” Katz said in the intro to Wednesday’s episode of PMT. “If you buy a book, also maybe when you’re on Amazon buying the book, buy a highlighter and maybe some sticky notes. Because what we did is we made an interactive book that you can also edit along with us.”

“We care more about telling than we do about spelling,” added Eric “PFT Commenter” Sollenberger. “And I think the point gets across.”

There’s a key moment in “Pardon My Book” where an email from the show’s longtime producer, Hank Lockwood, is inserted into the copy of the chapter to show the reservations some around Barstool had about going into business with ESPN. The large block of text appears to include three slightly different versions of the original email, pasted back-to-back-back into a confusing mess of words.

Another portion, where all the people working on the show in 2026 speculate about how the end of PMT might look, uses a different title for each person’s response and is impossible to follow.

These are not even complaints, because clearly it was intentional. Books like this are collectors’ items for the most passionate fans. And given that Dave Portnoy shafted PMT by releasing his own memoir just weeks before their 10th anniversary and long-scheduled book release, it makes sense that Big Cat and PFT Commenter would not make the book a massively high priority.

In a roundabout way, the excruciating lack of care taken in crafting the book only reinforces what people love about PMT. Somehow, their clever brand of foolishness has, time after time, only made them more lovable to one of the largest and most loyal audiences in the industry.