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Dave Portnoy takes shot at ESPN following Bussin' With The Boys announcement

Untitled design (2)by: Sam Gillenwater08/28/25samdg_33
Dave Portnoy
Tommy Gilligan | Imagn Images

Dave Portnoy has already been in the news this week in relation to his partnership with FOX Sports. Now, Portnoy is at it again, taking a shot at ESPN.

It was announced on Thursday morning that ‘Bussin’ With The Boys,’ hosted by Taylor Lewan and Will Compton, has partnered with the network and they’d start to make appearances on ESPN, mainly in the mornings on ‘Get Up.’ With that, Portnoy, who formerly employed the duo as part of Barstool Sports, took a jab at that news on social media.

“ESPN is officially Barstool Jr.” Portnoy quote-tweeted this morning.

The competition between ESPN and Barstool Sports goes back several years now. One instance was ESPN’s cancellation of ‘Barstool Van Talk’ in a short partnership between the two in 2017, following reaction by management and those at the network to being involved with Portnoy. Portnoy has since said, as recently as this year, that he doesn’t want talent at Barstool appearing on ESPN.

However, as of January, ‘Bussin’ With The Boys’ had no longer been associated with Barstool. It sounded at that point to be an amicable end to their connection, with Portnoy noting that Lewan and Compton had received quite the offer to go elsewhere with their podcast.

As far as these two networks or shows, it’s been a busy past week or so as far as partnerships. ‘Bussin With The Boys’ and ESPN have also each recently partnered with Josh Pate ahead of the college football season. Then, per reporting by Front Office Sports on Wednesday, Barstool is expected to invest in a new media production company from Ryen Russillo, now formerly of The Ringer.

This all comes after Portnoy was in the news to start this week because of his new role at FOX Sports, which also partnered with Barstool back in July. As part of that deal, Portnoy is to appear on their pregame show with ‘Big Noon Kickoff.’ Others around the Big Ten, though, seemingly have taken issue with that, starting with Ohio State seemingly banning him from their season debut on Saturday before revealing that to be a network decision by those at FOX.