When It All Falls Down

Ken Stickney and Kirk Barton of BuckeyeScoop.com proved once again this week that they're nothing more than two narcissistic lowlife scam artists who see their customers as rubes.

When the cryptocurrency market crashed this year, the first thing the corporate coin exchanges did was shut off their customers’ ability to turn fake internet criminal currency into actual money that adults use.

That’s because, like every other casino in the world, the bosses running the joint aren’t eminently concerned with the fools throwing dice during times of crisis. They will always take care of themselves before their customers. The house always wins, does it not? Tough luck, kiddos. Toodeloo!

That’s essentially what has transpired this week at Buckeye Scoop, a fan website about Ohio State revenue sports. I say fan website because that’s how far it has fallen since the university stripped their press credentials for, among other things, paying an injured special teams player to watch practice film and report observations back to the site’s overlords.

Here is the email from Associate Athletics Director Jerry Emig informing Scoop of its decision:

The full document can be viewed over here.

Some of you noble subscribers are inevitably asking yourselves, “What in the Hell is a Buckeye Scoop?”

I’ll answer your question with one of my own: You know the saying, ignorance is bliss?

This is one of those occasions, sweetheart. I advise you to scroll to the end of this column and click any WMDs that might catch your fancy. Then come back tomorrow for my usual diabolical rant against the government stooge of the day.

For those unfamiliar with Buckeye Scoop that insist on proceeding, allow this single post to offer insight into the internet depths in which you’re about to plunge. Take heed.

Until this week, Buckeye Scoop employed many fine and hardworking journalists, namely anyone not named Ken “NevadaBuck” Stickney or Kirk Barton. That doesn’t mean Scoop is immune from the old business principle that an organization is only as moral and competent as its leadership.

The Rooster last wrote about Buckeye Scoop drama back in September 2021 when co-owner Marc Givler announced a lawsuit against fellow co-owners Stickney and Barton.

Givler accused Stickney and Barton of embezzling from the business and not informing customers when they changed the billing cycle from “monthly” to “four weeks,” which allowed them charge their customers 13 times a year as opposed to 12.

Givler had receipts in which Stickney and Barton casually confess to the scheme:

[You can view Givler’s entire 70-page lawsuit over here.]

If you think this behavior is shady, well, welcome to contract law! As one civil attorney told The Rooster:

A lot of the times in cases like these it’s awful people bickering in such a way that you hope they were a way for both to lose. But at the end of the day, it comes down to the contract. And a lot of people enter into businesses with the idea that, “Hey, let’s make this arrangement official as soon as we can. We will hammer out the details later.”

I’ve seen tens of millions of dollars lost to that mindset.

I like Givler. I’ve never heard anyone on the beat say a bad word about him. However, he chose to do business with the Leopard Face-Eating Party. Even worse, he did business with them without making sure the contract wouldn’t allow his own face to be eaten.

As such, the judge on the case quickly returned posting powers to Stickney and Barton. It was a sign of bad things to come for Givler.

Since that point late last year, Buckeye Scoop has become an eclectic mix of hardworking professionals who had no role in losing the sites credentials, and Stickney and Barton shitposting whatever lurid fever dreams their petty minds conjured to peddle to their paypigs.

A good example of their dysfunctional marriage came last month, when Ohio State hosted a series of camps for high school prospects.

Barton, who has been persona non-grata’d by the program for which he once played, spent the day posting links to coverage from Buckeye Scoop’s competitors while his colleagues were on campus and posting updates in a separate thread.

It was always going to be an untenable situation, especially with the stress of the actual season looming in the not-too-distant future. Once Givler ultimately lost his lawsuit, Stickney and Barton were free to loot the site as they saw fit.

Two days ago, on the second anniversary of the site’s launch and moments after thousands of customers had auto-renewed another $139 annual subscription, Barton and Nevada decided to cut expenses by purging the professionals on the staff:

Stickney and Barton also pulled that famous cryptocurrency exchange trick where they disabled their customers’ ability to cancel their subscription on their own, instead making them grovel before them in emails:

Scoop recruiting analyst Alex Gleitman, with whom I worked at Eleven Warriors and consider a friend, quickly resigned after seeing Nevada and Barton massacre 95% of the people who did quality work at the site.

That leaves co-owners Barton, Stickney and Givler at Scoop along with longtime recruiting analyst Bill “The Bank” Greene, who is still under contract despite announcing that he would be taking a two-week hiatus from the site.

But you’ll notice that Stickney engaged in his usual tinpot dictator tactics of banning his enemies and any dissent. Like every other narcissist, Stickney denied any wrongdoing. He claimed that factual allegations against him were instead fabricated to make him look bad:

Stickney offers no other proof than saying some version of, “I am 100% right and you are 100% wrong.” If you disagree, or worse, demonstrate how he’s wrong, he will ban you from the site.

It’s a tactic that his padawan Barton has learned well in his time looting his customers alongside Stickney:

Weird how there are so many people — from the university itself to random shitposters on their own forums — who concoct elaborate lies meant to tarnish the sterling reputation of these two upstanding businessmen.

But that’s how they operate. Stickney and Barton could get caught on tape tag-teaming Brutus Buckeye in a port-a-pot before the Arkansas State game, and their reflexive response would be how the video was a 100% fabrication and total lie. It can’t be true if they say it’s false! That’s their No. 1 rule.

Don’t deceive yourself into thinking this is the end of the road for Stickney and Barton, either.

Sure, they axed 90% of their payroll shortly after an annual re-new billing cycle hit the bank account as the ultimate fuck-you cash grab.

But don’t underestimate the bottom of the intellectual barrel of the Buckeye Cinematic Universe.

We live in the golden age of grift, and there will always be helpless saps without critical thinking skills that will always be willing to pay charlatans so they can pretend they’re part of the insiders club, especially if they virtue signal their white grievance politics:

At this point, anyone who continues to give their money to Grift Cassidy and the Steroid Kid is going to get exactly what’s coming to them.

THOSE WMDs. 2022 has already had more flight cancellations than 2021… In Portugal, taking a dive into sardines… “Just show up and don’t ask questions:” An oral history of the “Please Stay, LeBron” video… Amazon gave Ring videos to police without a warrant… What’s really going. online police fentanyl exposure videos?