Drew Brown always knew how to have a good time and bring a smile to everyone’s face.

Brown also knew, however, when it was time to get serious and get to work.

For this senior sports broadcasting/sports information major, Brown found an opportunity to combine those things in his summer internship with Barstool Heartland.

A direct affiliate of the parent company, Barstool Heartland is based out of Indianapolis, Indiana and is run by Pittsburgh native and former Indianapolis Colts punter Pat McAfee.

“I’ve been a big fan of Pat McAfee throughout his whole football career and when I saw he was retiring to join a popular Internet media platform, I knew that’d be the type of job right up my alley,” said Brown. “[McAfee] put out a tweet shortly after retiring about needing interns and I hopped right on it.”

Brown jumped on the opportunity to apply in late February. Unlike most interviews, the hiring process took four days and the nearly 70 applicants were narrowed down each day, Brown said.

“It was honestly pretty competitive, and I ended up being one of the last men standing,” said Brown.

During the process, Brown had to compete against other interns to prove that he was the most qualified.

Brown moved out to Indianapolis in May and started working for Heartland right away.  Not even a week into his internship, he found himself back in Pittsburgh covering the Penguins, who were hosting Game Five of the Stanley Cup Final. Brown pitched the idea of covering the outside festivities to McAfee and he loved it, according to Brown.

Brown and a fellow intern interviewed fans outside the game festivities that were taking place in the area. Once back at the office, Brown edited the package down and the video was posted to Barstool Heartland’s social media ahead of Game Six, which the Penguins ultimately won. Brown mentioned that there were roughly 300-400 thousand views on the video.

Another event Brown worked early into his internship was the Indy 500. Barstool Heartland had camped out the whole weekend leading up to the race.

“We spent the whole weekend creating content, tailgating with fans, going to concerts along with the Indy 500 race itself and really just getting to know one another,” said Brown.

Brown had applied countless skills that he learned through Waynesburg University’s Department of Communication over his time at Barstool Heartland.

“I originally applied as a hopeful video editor intern due to my skills in the field of video production, and was able to apply those throughout my time working with Barstool Heartland,” said Brown.

Brown was also able to apply some of the skills from his sports announcing classes with some of the on camera work that he did.

Brown said that he is very thankful for the opportunity to work with Barstool Heartland over the summer and looks forward to working with them in the future. Brown has made the trip back to Indianapolis a few times since his internship has ended because he believes that keeping a relationship with employers is essential.

“I keep in touch with literally every person who works there, and am doing my best to stay involved and interactive with everybody,” said Brown.

Most recently, Brown went back to Indianapolis over Waynesburg’s Fall Break to continue work with Barstool Heartland.

“I made a pretty cool promotional video for one of their podcasts, and came up with the idea to play a competitive game of BASEketball in office on the basketball court,” said Brown. “We streamed the game to the Internet and it was viewed by nearly 75,000 people.”

Brown is eager to continue working for Barstool Heartland in the future and is thankful for the opportunity to work for them over the summer. Most importantly, however, Brown said that he felt he truly represented the city of Pittsburgh well over his time.

“Representing Pittsburgh was a big goal of mine heading into the internship and something I thought I did pretty well,” said Brown. “Family, friends, co-workers, etc.— all enjoyed seeing my loyalty for the Steel City while working for a company that had little to do with Pittsburgh.”