There is a fine line between clever strategy and throwing your own teammates under the bus, and Team White sprinted across it at the Internet Invitational. Put $4 million and a survivor-style format in the same room, and friendships turn into chess pieces. This time, the sacrificed pawns were a former NFL coach and a St. Louis golfer already fighting for his reputation.

Speaking on the Fore Play podcast, YouTube golf star Sam “Riggs” Bozoian admitted the fallout was impossible to miss: 

“The only way to gain an advantage is for people to think that you’re worse than you actually are. You’ll get better pairings, better teams to play with, and all of it. But it’s hard to throw that in front of 10 million people watching and say, ‘Dude, we need you. We need you to just be like, “You’re right. I’m terrible. I can’t hit the ball on the planet.” And we weren’t able to have that side conversation. So, I did feel terrible, and Frankie picked up on that immediately. Frankie got involved and was like, ‘Wait a second here.’”

The idea made sense on a whiteboard. At the lunch table, it did not.

The committee can veto a pairing it believes is being deliberately thrown and request a more competitive matchup. It has been called the “Gruden Rule,” with Dave Portnoy, Kevin Kisner and Big Cat approving matchups. Team White tried to use it on the pairing of Bobby Ray and Jon Gruden against Frankie Borrelli and Francis Ellis of Team Blue. Barstool Bush reports the match stood regardless.

The reasoning was simple arithmetic: “How about we try to see if instead of getting one match that we’re favored in and one match that they’re maybe favored in, what if we could get two that we’re probably favored in?”

Here is where it gets cynical. Riggs argued that reputation is a liability in this format.

That is classic sandbagging, and it explains why nobody could say it politely to the two men being targeted. Bobby Ray had already been defending his handicap on Instagram, according to the podcast, so the veto attempt landed like a public verdict.

Frankie did not need the logic explained. By Riggs’ account, he told Team White, “You guys should be embarrassed,” and Bobby Ray took it personally: “You are saying I suck.”

Heavy’s coverage backs up the chaos, reporting that Ray effectively sided with Team Blue and that Gruden looked frustrated by his teammates’ lack of confidence. Riggs said the explanation never got a chance in front of a camera crew and a huge audience.

Kisner, whom Portnoy and Big Cat quizzed about the golfers, admitted he was little help: “I did not know the golfers well enough to have a real good opinion.”

None of this should shock anyone who watched last year. The 2025 edition at Big Cedar Lodge crowned Brad Dalke, Francis Ellis and Cody “Beef” Franke, who split $1 million. Franke died suddenly at 31 in October 2025, before the series aired, and this year’s trophy carries his name.

The purse is now four times larger, and with 64 players, every veto and whisper becomes content.

The result is complicated. Team White and Team Blue finished 8-8 after regulation, and White advanced after Big John’s 22-foot putt with his Reaper putter won the sudden-death playoff. What happened in the Bobby Ray and Gruden match itself is not clear from the reporting available.

So the veto bid changed nothing on the scoreboard, but it dominated the conversation. White moved on to face Team Green, and the real question is whether a locker room that was this blunt about its own pecking order can stay together.