Dave Portnoy showered with boos, trolls Ohio State crowd with 'still can't beat Michigan' shirt

Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy, a new addition to Big Noon Kickoff in 2025, was showered with boos from the Ohio State fans Saturday. Naturally, being a Michigan alum and fan, Portnoy decided to troll the Buckeye fans on hand, ready for the showdown vs. Texas.

Portnoy continually said “he wasn’t trolling” but that the Big Ten still goes through Michigan. That’s when Portnoy revealed his “Still Can’t Beat Michigan” tee shirt, much to the chagrin of the Ohio State faithful.

During that sequence, Portnoy eventually left the stage, but Urban Meyer clapped back! The former Ohio State coach started the “O-H-I-O” chant.”

Dave Portnoy makes his Big Noon Kickoff debut singing the Michigan fight song in Columbus before cutting a WWE-style promo on the Ohio State fans in attendance.

"I'm not here to troll you. I'm here to root for the Big Ten. And it goes through Ann Arbor. And until you can beat… pic.twitter.com/ZlaeEuOXOF

— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) August 30, 2025

During the following segment, Portnoy egged on the fans more by saying if Ohio State coach Ryan Day loses to Michigan for a fifth straight year, he could be out. Of course, the troll job worked as the boos kept coming.

“What happens if you lose to Michigan again this year? (Ryan Day) could be out,” Portnoy said. “There’s a reason I’m not allowoed in The Shoe today. He’s soft and Michigan has broken him.”

Fellow analyst Brady Quinn then changed the topic to the Texas-Ohio State game on hand Saturday. That’s as Portnoy asked Urban Meyer about his former pupil’s future.

This is right after Portnoy wore a “disguise” in Columbus ahead of the show. It’s been shrouded in controversy all week, as the Barstool Sports founder and noted Michigan fan won’t be allowed inside Ohio Stadium for the show.

He hasn’t shied away from his feelings on the matter, and in true Portnoy fashion, he’s turned it around and made it work for him. The Massachusetts native arrived to Saturday’s show with a fake mustache and a hat that read “I (heart) Ryan Day.”

Front Office Sports initially reported Ohio State banned Portnoy from the stadium, though athletics director Ross Bjork said it was a decision from FOX. While Portnoy is now part of the network’s Big Noon Kickoff pregame show, FOX said only its main panelists who will be on the desk for the whole show will be in The Horseshoe before kickoff.

Portnoy blasted the “semantics game” taking place earlier this week, adding that the Barstool Sports’ pregame show planned for Saturday was also canceled. He also said there was “pressure” from Ohio State, given his Michigan fandom.

“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, via Barstool Pick ‘Em. “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.”

Stephen Samra contributed to this report