Dave Portnoy 'out of it' if Bryce Underwood wants to rework NIL deal with Michigan

Dave Portnoy promised to make sure Michigan never wanted for a superstar quarterback recruit, and pledged millions to make that happen. Portnoy’s efforts bore fruit when the Wolverines flipped 2025’s No. 1 overall quarterback Bryce Underwood in the days leading into last year’s Early Signing Day.

A year later, the Barstool Sports CEO has made it clear he has no interest in being involved in any future renegotiations involving Michigan’s well-paid freshman QB. Portnoy opened up about his involvement in Underwood’s recruitment and his thoughts on the generally poorly-regulated world of NIL during an appearance on Tuesday’s The Triple Option podcast with co-hosts and fellow FOX Sports‘ Big Noon Kickoff personalities Mark Ingram, Urban Meyer and Rob Stone.

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“I’m out of it. (Underwood would) have some big balls to say he wants to renegotiate now. I don’t think that’s coming down the pipe. That would be surreal,” Portnoy said on The Triple Option podcast, likely referencing Underwood’s difficult true freshman season in which he ranked 11th in the Big Ten in passing with 2,229 yards and nine touchdowns to six interceptions. “But I’m out of it. My involvement in that (process), I’ve told the story a little bit, I was on one of our (Barstool) podcasts and after watching the Michigan quarterback play (in 2024), I was like, ‘We’ll never not have a (viable) quarterback, I will go get us a quarterback. I’ll pledge like $3 million if I have to to get (Michigan) a quarterback.’”

Portnoy then relayed the story about how he connected with Jolin Zhu, the wife of multibillionaire entrepreneur Larry Ellison, in an effort to put together a strong NIL offer for Underwood’s services, though his participation has been mostly of a distant benefactor. And for good reason. Portnoy, a successful businessman in his own right, has no interest in diving into the wild world of NIL.

“To me, it seems like anything goes now (with NIL). … It seems like there’s no rules,” Portnoy added. “There’s no contracts, it’s not like professional sports, the NFL or anything like that. It really seems like if somebody came along and said, ‘Hey Bryce, here’s $20 mill,’ I think he could bounce if he wanted to. I don’t think there’s any rules going on with that, as far as I could tell. I was involved in the Bryce stuff, but I wasn’t involved in the pen-to-paper, so I don’t know what the actual contract or whatever they call it looks like.”