That Time I Tried To Legally Change My Name To "Sue Perbole"

Jamie Squire. Getty Images.

I've blogged this story before, but it's been six years - so I figured we've probably got some new blood around these parts who haven't heard it. Here's the tale of me trying to legally change my name to "Sue Perbole"….

Back in 2017, when I was an intern at Barstool DESPERATELY trying to earn the affection of Dave, Big Cat, KFC, Erika, Nate, and anyone else who had hiring power, there was pretty much nothing I would say no to for content. 

I mean - I literally stopped jerking off for (almost) a month and gave public updates - on the company's flagship show - on whether or not I came in my sleep DAILY. 

Every day I'd hop on the Rundown during the aftershow, my boss would ask if I had a wet dream yet, and I'd confirm that I hadn't….

(26:30 if the timestamp doesn't work)

….until I eventually did cum in my sleep at 19 days.

Some may say this juvenile challenge was embarrassing, even gross - but listen: I was in community college at the time, working a shitty graphic design job on top of my internship here, and I wanted to just be a Barstool employee more than anything. I was a huge fan of the site for years and it seemed like a dream job full of talking about what you're passionate about, hanging out with your friends, and meeting your idols - and I can now confirm that's exactly what it is. So give me a break on the "No cum outta this dick!" thing. It was worth it.

Anyway, around this time in 2017, a few of us were brought down to a commercial shoot for the Comedy Central Rundown - which was going to be LIVE in Houston for the entire Super Bowl week - and I got to play one of the horses you see here….

I don't know how we settled on Dave and KFC riding Glenny Balls and Clem while my stick figure ass got stuck with Big Cat on top of me, but that's not important. What IS important was the request from Dave that followed this shoot. As we were breaking down the lighting equipment/cameras that day, he turned to me and asked if I would be willing to legally change my name for the company.

Obviously, my answer was yes (I didn't even think twice about it), and my next question was “What am I changing it to?”

Dave then informed me that they really weren’t supposed to say “Super Bowl” on the Comedy Central Rundowns due to the NFL's famously stingy trademark laws, and since this was the company's first outing on television - they were actually trying to be safe. Somewhere along the way, someone thought it'd be a funny bit to have an intern on sight who legally changed their name to ‘Super Bowl’ - which they figured might allow them to get away with a non-"Big Game" slip up - and I was the first intern they asked. 

You may think I was an insane person for saying yes to such a ridiculous request so quickly, but this didn't only mean getting in my future boss' good graces in my eyes - it also meant my first company trip, to the Super Bowl in Houston, which would include being apart of a show on Comedy Central and getting to attend the Barstool Super Bowl party. It was a no brainer for a straight outta high school Bob Fox. I printed out paperwork the second we got back to the office, and started filling it out with the help of Office Manager Brett (shoutout OMB). 

We realized it’d probably be hard to get away with straight up changing it to ‘Super Bowl’ due to obvious trademark/legal issues, so Frankie Borrelli and I came up with ‘Sue Perbole’ and got to work. 

The hardest part was going home and sitting my mother down to inform her that I would be legally changing the name she gave to me to something absurd like "SUE PERBOLE" for the minimum 90 days the government requires before I'd be able to change it back to Robbie Fox. That didn’t go over too well - but I assured her it was for the betterment of the company that I’d soon become paid by, and eventually she came to terms with it and trusted me on the ludicrous name change. Thanks for that, Mom.

Unfortunately, the story kinda fizzles out like a deflated balloon here, because right as I was about to drop off the first stack of documents to begin the process at my county courthouse, we found out that legally changing your name isn't as quick and easy as we expected! It involves lots of back and forth with the paperwork, and you even have to put an ad in the NEWSPAPER to confirm the name change if I recall correctly - so even if we went through with it, I wouldn't be able to get an ID by the Super Bowl….which was sorta the whole bit.

If someone slipped up and said "Super Bowl" instead of "The Big Game", they'd pull me into the show and have me take out my wallet to reveal the "SUE PERBOLE" ID and legal documents to prove that was my name - but without all of that, it probably would've just fallen flat. When I informed Dave of this, it almost seemed like he had forgotten about the request entirely, so he didn't really care - and the idea was scrapped.

There was a brief period in my life when I truly thought my name would be "Sue Perbole" though, and I get a real kick outta telling that story every Super Bowl week.

Speaking of Super Bowl week, we've got Barstool Radio back from Margaritaville at 6pm ET tonight, so be sure to tune in….