Fox Sports has removed Dave Portnoy and Barstool from its Big Noon Kickoff show after friction with Ohio State, and Portnoy says he does not blame them.

New York Post reporting shows Barstool Sports will no longer appear on Fox Sports’ “Big Noon Kickoff” ahead of Saturday college football games, a shift Portnoy confirmed after The Athletic first detailed the change.

Portnoy and other Barstool personalities had been part of Fox’s college football coverage for just over a year. The broader Barstool partnership with Fox is not finished. The weekday FS1 show “Wake Up Barstool” is still airing daily.

Portnoy, a Michigan alum and booster, did not cast the exit as a mystery. In a Friday evening post on X, he put the blame on Ohio State and head coach Ryan Day and said Fox faced a simple business choice.

Portnoy says Day pushed Fox until the network folded

Portnoy wrote that Ohio State and Day leaned on the Big Ten and threatened Fox until the network had no room left to maneuver.

He posted:

“Ohio State and Ryan Day b****ed and moaned to the Big 10 and threatened Fox till they had no choice.”

He added that the juice was not worth the squeeze, that huge dollars were at stake, and that he did not blame Fox. He accused Day of throwing temper tantrums and making threats every few days over things Portnoy had said, and he called the coach soft.

Sports television already runs on fragile egos and conference money. A loud rival booster on a Big Ten partner’s pregame set was always going to test that arrangement.

High-profile sports voices get pulled into the same cultural grind elsewhere, including when Stephen A. Smith described private political pressure after on-air criticism.

Athletic cites Barstool’s edge against a Big Ten marriage

The Athletic’s account, which Portnoy confirmed, pointed to a cleaner institutional problem. Traditional Fox programming and Barstool’s edgy persona were a hard fit once Fox’s Big Ten partnership sat in the middle of the deal.

That is the part that travels beyond one coach’s feelings. Conference TV money is enormous. Irreverent talent is disposable when a league partner wants the noise turned down.

Portnoy kept the rivalry jab going and said Barstool’s own college football coverage would continue, including a possible trip to Columbus. He claimed most fans still like the Michigan-Ohio State fight and are not thin-skinned about it.

Off-field messes have a way of sticking to broadcasters, as when former NFL voice Tony Romo was arrested on a drunk-driving charge and suddenly became the story himself.

Stadium ban fight already dogged Portnoy last season

Last season, reports circulated that Portnoy had been banned from entering Ohio Stadium. Ohio State officially denied that he was barred from the venue.

The denial did not end the friction. Portnoy’s presence at Ohio State home games had already drawn flak, and his public running battle with Day gave Fox and the Big Ten a steady headache on a show built to sell the sport, not a booster’s needling.

Fox gets to keep the safer weekday Barstool show and shed the Saturday flashpoint. Portnoy gets to keep needling Ohio State without a network handler in the middle.

Familiar sports-media seats open and close for colder reasons too, including the shock of losing on-air voices such as when ESPN analyst Chris Spatola died at 47.

Fox kept the weekday show and cut the Saturday risk

“Wake Up Barstool” remaining on FS1 makes the network’s calculus plain. Barstool still has value. The pregame stage next to a Big Ten rights deal did not.

Portnoy said he always thought Day was soft and that even he underestimated it. That is his claim, not an independent finding. Neither Day nor Ohio State is quoted in the available material answering the latest charge, beyond the university’s earlier denial of a stadium ban.

College football’s TV product now runs through league offices, campus PR shops, and network sales teams. A Michigan booster with a megaphone was useful until the complaints cost more than the cameo.

Fox viewers already watch politics crash into institutions in harder arenas, from tariff fights mapped out in court to judges loading opinions with partisan shots.

Portnoy’s version is blunt: Day complained, the Big Ten route closed in, Fox protected the bigger check, and Barstool College Football moves on without the “Big Noon Kickoff” slot.

When a conference partner and a thin-skinned coach can scrub a rival’s voice off a pregame show, the broadcast gets quieter and the money gets safer. Fans are the ones left with the blander hour.