Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy says Ohio State and coach Ryan Day pushed Fox Sports to cut him from Big Noon Kickoff after repeated pressure over his presence on the show.
Portnoy learned Friday that he and other Barstool personalities would no longer appear on Fox’s college football pregame program. The notice landed less than 24 hours before Big Noon Kickoff was set to broadcast from Minneapolis ahead of Michigan’s game against Minnesota.
Just the News reported that the move ends Portnoy’s regular role on the show. Barstool and Fox had begun working together last fall.
Portnoy did not leave quietly. He said he knows who is responsible and pointed directly at Ohio State and head coach Ryan Day. He claimed the school and Day had repeatedly pressured Fox over his presence.
In Portnoy’s telling, the network finally decided the relationship was no longer worth the potential complications. He put it more bluntly in a post of his own.
"Juice wasn’t worth the squeeze,"
That is the full quoted line available from his post. No fuller text, platform details, or timestamp beyond that phrase appears in the available account.
Fox Sports, Ohio State, and Ryan Day offered no quoted response in the initial report. The pressure claim rests on Portnoy’s own account of what drove the decision.
Sudden exits and uncertain futures for high-profile TV talent have become a familiar media storyline, including cases where a Disney president ducks clear answers on a late-night host’s future.
Portnoy built Barstool on a brash, unfiltered style that often collides with institutional preferences. College football programs guard their brands closely. When a major conference school and its head coach lean on a national network, the network has to weigh access, inventory, and headaches.
Sports media has seen its share of walkouts and collisions with editorial or institutional power, including a Seattle Times sports columnist who walked out after editors spiked his defense of women’s sports.
Here the timing is the sharp edge. Informing a contributor on Friday, with the Minneapolis broadcast less than a day away, leaves little room for a clean handoff or public explanation. Viewers tuning in for the Michigan-Minnesota buildup got a quieter set without the Barstool contingent.
Fox remains a central player in big-event coverage and political polling alike, as when a Fox News poll showed Ramaswamy clinging to a slim lead in Ohio races. That same network brand now sits in the middle of a dispute over who gets to talk college football on its pregame stage.
Portnoy’s version is straightforward: repeated pressure from Ohio State and Day made the partnership more trouble than it was worth, so Fox cut the Barstool group loose. Without on-record replies from the school, the coach, or the network, that remains his charge rather than a settled institutional record.
Other Barstool names were included in the same notice, though the report does not list them. The partnership that started last fall is, at least for Big Noon Kickoff, over for now.
Networks that yield to pressure from powerful programs teach every coach and athletic department the same lesson: push hard enough and the outspoken voice disappears before kickoff.