Dave Portnoy Says Ohio State Is Playing Games With Stadium Ban
Portnoy’s Fox debut hits OSU roadblock
Dave Portnoy is joining the Big Noon Kickoff show with Fox for this upcoming 2025 season, and it's already creating controversy.
Portnoy is a prominent supporter of the Michigan Wolverines, to the point where he was instrumental in bringing top quarterback recruit Bryce Underwood to Ann Arbor. Unsurprisingly, the rival Ohio State Buckeyes program isn't the biggest fan of Portnoy, or his fandom for "That Team Up North."
That's already become an issue in Week One, with Portnoy set to make his Big Noon Kickoff debut ahead of the massive Ohio State-Texas game on Saturday. Ohio State reportedly barred him from entering Ohio Stadium, though the program denied that it was their decision to limit him to the outside table.
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Brutus the Ohio State Buckeye. (Photo by Emilee Chinn/Getty Images)
Portnoy Fires Back At Ohio State Over Stadium ‘Ban’
Ohio State athletic director Ross Bjork said after the news broke that the decision was Fox's, not a purposeful ban as a result of Portnoy's fandom.
Portnoy, in some new comments this week, said the Buckeyes are playing a "semantics game."
"The AD has said no, and it’s a semantics game in the sense that, like, yeah, they banned us, but like, they’re saying, FOX did it," Portnoy said on Barstool Pickem. "It’s just common sense. Like, we did this huge deal with FOX Sports, right? A huge deal. It’s Week 1, the biggest game of the year. We’re all booked and ready to do our pregame show with FOX, which is the plan, and we will be doing in Week 2 — Iowa, Iowa State — and suddenly that show is just canceled, pulled the plug about a week ago. I was never going to be on the main desk, but I was going to be in the stadium, and all the people affiliated with the show get credentialed.
"And it just was like, ‘Hey, you know, there’s major problems. They hate your guts. They don’t want you here.’ And I knew this for a week and a half. … And then – we’re friends, we’re partners with FOX, so we’re not trying to create, you know, mayhem for them. Like, they just did a big deal and you don’t want to light them on fire. So it’s like, ‘Alright, we’ll just zip it. Won’t do anything.’ I mean, there were conversations of what we could say, what we couldn’t say. I pushed back, it’s like, ‘Listen, I gotta be me.’ But they really didn’t, you know – there was so much pressure coming from Ohio State. They were broken."
If Ohio State really did put pressure out to stop Portnoy from going into The Horseshoe, that's not a great look for the program. Yes, he's a prominent Michigan fan, and isn't exactly unbiased, but that's how media coverage works. Sometimes, athletic departments or football teams have to deal with criticism. It's not like he's calling the game for Fox, just giving his opinions and views on it beforehand. Who cares?