Maserati Mike and Burns go to war over Bears fandom

Put a lot of Chicago people in 1 office, give them a football team that has let them down for decades, and eventually somebody asks who loves that team the most. At Barstool on Thursday, the loudest answer came from Maserati Mike. His pitch: Burns makes the content, but Mike is the real fan, and in a head-to-head he'd name 10x more Bears than Burns could.

Ohio’s Tate

@OhioTate

“I’m a bigger Bears fan than everyone in this office. Like Burns makes content, but I’m a bigger fan. We could go Bear for Bear and I would name 10x more Bears than him” - Maserati Mike (once told me he could roll a 300 so we added him to the stream then he was the worst bowler)

It's a big claim, and the Barstool office is going to want proof. The quote also came with a warning attached: this is the same Mike who once said he could roll a 300, got put on a bowling stream because of it and turned out to be the worst bowler there. So when he says he'd win a Bear-for-Bear name-off by a mile, people have a reason to doubt him.

Burns has a real case of his own. His Barstool bio calls him an Illinois State grad, a Chicago sports nut and a Bears season ticket holder, which is the kind of thing that usually settles these arguments. It didn't settle this one. By midday the office was calling it the Bear Off, and people were lining up behind one side or the other.

Nicky Smokes

@nickysmokess

“@therealburns3 is a headline Bears fan” - @RealMikeyBets The Bear Off is heating up

That's the harshest shot of the day so far: Mikey Bets calling Burns a "headline Bears fan." It means Burns knows the storylines, not the deep cuts. It's also exactly the point Mike was making, and it came from a third person, so now it's 2 against 1 in the office.

According to Barstool's own writeup, the argument started upstairs before The Yak and then spilled onto the show. Mike put together a top 10 of the biggest Bears fans in the Chicago office, and Burns was not near the top. When someone on the show asked what Burns would have to do to climb the list, Mike kept it short.

The Yak

@BarstoolYak

"what would @therealburns3 have to do to be higher on this list?" "a lot." - @MaseratiMike_

Nicky Smokes

@nickysmokess

Maserati Mike’s Top 10 Bears fans in the office. Yes, he put himself at one. t.co/rmXbbBUYFG

"A lot" is about as cold as it gets between coworkers. The clip spread quickly, and at least part of the audience was convinced. Barstool's own blog on the fight said Mike "might legitimately be the biggest Bears fan in a Chicago office full of Bears fans," which is a big thing to give a guy with that bowling history.

What happens next is the obvious part. Mike has now said out loud that he'd win a Bear-for-Bear name-off, and the office has already named it the Bear Off. Someone needs to put them both at a table with a timer and a list of backup long snappers from 2004. Until then, this is a Chicago argument with no ending, and nobody at Barstool is going to be the one to stop it.