Skip to main content
Join Now
Get a profile. Be recruited.

Dave Portnoy wears disguise, Ryan Day hat in Columbus before FOX Big Noon Kickoff debut

Stephen Samraby: Steve Samra08/30/25SamraSource
Dave Portnoy
(Eric Rueb/Providence Journal)

Dave Portnoy is ready for his Big Noon Kickoff debut on FOX. 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. Check out the video below, as the Massachusetts native arrived to Saturday’s show with a fake mustache and a hat that reads “I (heart) Ryan Day.”

As you can tell, there’s no love between Portnoy and Ohio State, and especially none from the Barstool Sports founder for the Buckeyes head coach. Don’t expect any interactions between Day and Portnoy on Saturday, regardless of how entertaining it would be.

Moreover, 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.”

All in all, it seems like Portnoy and FOX are getting what they want out of their partnership so far, as the story has been all over the news all weeks. We’ll see how it all comes together during the social media star’s debut on Big Noon Kickoff, but it shouldn’t be boring, at least.

— On3’s Nick Schultz contributed to this article.