Dave Portnoy unloads on Ohio State over 'semantics game' with FOX over stadium ban

Amid a back-and-forth about whether he’s banned from Ohio Stadium for the season opener against Texas, Dave Portnoy didn’t hold back about the situation Wednesday night. Portnoy reacted to it during Barstool Pick ‘Em.

Front Office Sports initially reported Ohio State banned Portnoy from the stadium, though athletics director Ross Bjork said it was a decision from FOX. Portnoy is now part of the network’s Big Noon Kickoff pregame show, though 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 and said Barstool Sports’ pregame show planned for Saturday was also canceled last week. 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. “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.”

Dave Portnoy: ‘They’re a sensitive bunch’

Dave Portnoy said while he didn’t say anything about the apparent ban from Ohio Stadium, word started getting out. He said former Buckeyes star Bobby Carpenter mentioned it on his podcast, and more stories started emerging. Then, Front Office Sports reported the ban, and Portnoy sounded off on Ohio State.

“Bobby Carpenter, who’s a former player, is on some sort of Ohio State-related podcast, and they brought it up. They’re like, ‘We have it, on authority, Dave Portnoy is not allowed into the stadium,'” Portnoy said. “Started catching wind, going viral, multiple stories, and they look soft, weak, broken, all the things that Lou Holtz and I have been saying, they are. They’re a sensitive bunch that have been stomped on by the Block M. And I don’t care how many national championships they win, it means nothing until they beat Michigan. And this shows with this type of behavior. But predictably, in which I said, they’re going to look really soft if this becomes public, and it became public.

“So the AD is like, ‘Wait a minute, we didn’t ban it. We have nothing to do with that.’ Only a fool would believe that’s true. Only a fool. The evidence is there. And by the way, it’s awesome. Like, this is college football pettiness. What they should have said is, ‘F*** this guy. There’s no f***ing way we’re letting this f***ing troll from Michigan into our stadium, in our house,’ instead of doing this back and forth thing. But this is college football. This is rivalry.”

Portnoy added he was also preparing to give a speech at a Columbus bar called The Library, but the venue backed out of the plan. He also said he heard his trolls of Ohio State coach Ryan Day were a factor in the decision, and Portnoy called him out, as well.

“I was talking to the FOX, one of the FOX guys,” Portnoy said. “They’re all like, ‘We’re trying to make it work. And I just — he called me and the first thing (I said), I go, ‘Welcome to the Dave Portnoy business.’ Like this is it.” … “The semantics of it of Ohio State being like, ‘Did we quite literally call Dave and and it?’ Or, ‘Do we have a relationship with FOX in the middle?’

“However you want to look at it, the hit was put in from Ohio State. If you think anything other than that, that’s maybe why you go to Ohio State. That Ohio State education ain’t no Michigan Education. They’re like, ‘You attacked (Ryan Day), you said he he’s soft.’ And, yeah, he’s Ryan Day. Hey, he is soft. He’s softer than soft.”