Dan Le Batard and Jon “Stugotz” Weiner officially split when Stugotz’s name was removed from The Dan Le Batard Show this summer. Long before that, Stugotz was more or less replaced by Jonathan Zaslow, Le Batard’s de facto co-host. During a fantasy football conversation on Friday’s show, the Stugotz was strong in Zaslow.
Le Batard is still on vacation, so Zaslow has been shepherding the show. The crew suffered from a slow news day in the dead of August on Friday, so Zaslow improvised.
“It’s that time of year,” Zaslow said about 17 minutes the livestream. “We’re in Week 2 of preseason. We’re either having our fantasy football draft, or we’re setting our fantasy draft. And what that also means, I don’t know if you’ve been seeing this on social media recently, you have fantasy football leagues that are paying off their debt from the end of last season.”
“It’s a big thing, right, Dave [Dameshek]?” Zaslow continued. “Where the loser, last place of the fantasy football league, has to do some sort of punishment. Some of them can be really silly, and some of them can be kind of brutal, and these leagues are posting the videos all over social media. I’ll be honest with you. Some of them are funny, but I think it’s got a little played out, if I’m being perfectly honest. I think it’s a little bit played out. Oooh, look at how we punished the last-place guy.”
Producer Chris Cote chimed in to say he recently saw one league’s loser incur the punishment of “having to object to a stranger’s wedding.” That generated banter and laughter in the room for a while before Zaslow recentered the conversation.
“We do that so you don’t become a deadbeat owner, right?” Zaslow said. “Isn’t that the point? Where, if you finish last, your team sucks, so now you’re not paying attention more, and you’re a deadbeat owner, well, no, there’s a punishment.”
Then, Zaslow offered a galaxy-brain solution.
“Whatever happened to integrity?” he said. “Where we all have integrity, we’re all setting our lineups, we’re all trying hard in our fantasy league [so] there doesn’t have to be a punishment to keep you from being a deadbeat owner. The punishment actually goes to the runner-up. To the team that loses in the championship game!”
Zaslow has a new idea for fantasy punishments pic.twitter.com/YPnnZIZzZ8
— The Dan Le Batard Show (@LeBatardShow) August 21, 2026
Cote and Amin Elhassan immediately shot down Zaslow’s idea — pointing out that fantasy owners would just immediately start tanking as soon as it became clear their teams weren’t good enough to win the championship.
“How about we have some integrity?” Zaslow asked.
“OK, go tell the NBA that,” ElHassan retorted. Touché.
Zaslow attempted again to win everyone over, saying, “Can you imagine the stakes in the fantasy football championship game? The winner gets all the money, and the loser has the punishment!”
“Yes, the loser does have the punishment,” ElHassan said. “You know who the loser is? The last guy in the league. That’s the loser! Second guy is not the loser. You’re thinking about things — all the sudden, we just absolve everyone else in the league, and the only loser is second place? Get out of here. Sounds like a loser talking.”
Respectfully, no, Zaslow. Just no. Fantasy football punishments are flirting with jumping the shark, however. Isn’t paying to suffer through a fantasy football season, let alone putting yourself through that financial and emotional pain just to finish last, punishment enough? In this economy?
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