Mockery? Chaos? Rivalry fuel? Dave Portnoy built his whole act around it, with Ryan Day and Ohio State sitting right in the middle of the target. But now that Portnoy is the one getting pushed off FOX’s Big Noon Kickoff, he is blaming the Buckeyes for the mess. Funny how that works. After years of calling Day “Cryin’ Ryan,” guess who is doing the crying now?

Portnoy says FOX did not leave much mystery around why he was being removed from Big Noon Kickoff. When Front Office Sports asked what reason the network gave him, his answer was just two words: “Ohio State.” He said the complaints had been there “basically since Day One,” claiming Buckeye officials objected to his role almost immediately after FOX announced the partnership and even showed executives a 30 to 45-minute compilation of him ripping Ohio State and Ryan Day.

According to Portnoy, the situation only kept getting worse. He said he was shifted around, sidelined for multiple Big Noon Kickoff appearances, and eventually told not to travel to Columbus because Ohio State had effectively drawn a line. “If Dave’s there, we won’t cooperate in any aspect of the show,” Portnoy recalled being told. In his version of events, that was the pressure point that made his presence more trouble for FOX than it was worth.

To be fair, Portnoy does not blame FOX for failing to try. “They tried! They tried to smooth it over,” he said, recalling that the network had even floated the idea of introducing him through an interview with Day. But Portnoy believes the complaints never stopped. He said FOX was constantly stuck answering calls over his presence, while he was barely getting “10 minutes of airtime” on the show anyway. At some point, the math became pretty obvious.

Portnoy even acknowledged why FOX may have finally pulled the plug. “What’s the point? For what? What is the upside?” he said, referring to the billions tied to FOX’s relationship with the Big Ten. He added that he understood why the network got tired of the constant back-and-forth. So from Portnoy’s own telling, FOX did not exactly choose between two equal sides. It chose one of college football’s biggest programs over a Michigan troll getting a few minutes on Saturday morning.

Dave Portnoy’s Long-Running War With Ryan Day and Ohio State

Long before FOX put Dave Portnoy on Big Noon Kickoff, he had already made trolling Ohio State part of his Michigan persona.

Portnoy is a Michigan alumnus and one of the Wolverines’ loudest public supporters, and Ryan Day became one of his favorite targets. He repeatedly mocked Day, called him “Cryin’ Ryan,” questioned his toughness and celebrated Michigan’s four-game winning streak over Ohio State from 2021 through 2024. By the time FOX came calling, there was already years of material sitting there.

Then FOX decided to throw him directly into Buckeye country.

Portnoy made his Big Noon Kickoff debut in Columbus on August 30, 2025, before Ohio State’s game against Texas, and immediately leaned into the villain role. He walked onto the set singing Michigan’s fight song, “The Victors,” before revealing a maize-and-blue “Still Can’t Beat Michigan” shirt under his Big Ten hoodie. He then told the crowd, “You still can’t beat us,” and declared that the Big Ten still went through Ann Arbor.

Portnoy did not stop there. Former Ohio State coach Urban Meyer gave him a Buckeyes jersey with “El Presidente” on the back, and Portnoy responded that his new house needed toilet paper. He also called Day “soft” and said Michigan had “broken” him.

Even the stadium-access controversy became content. Portnoy later showed up outside Ohio Stadium in a fake mustache and an “I Love Ryan Day” hat while claiming Day had banned him from entering the stadium, something Ohio State denied. The school said Portnoy simply was not part of the main FOX desk crew allowed inside.

The trolling carried through the rest of the 2025 season. Before Michigan and Ohio State met, FOX highlighted Portnoy counting the days since the Buckeyes’ last win over Michigan and calling The Game the “easiest game” on the Wolverines’ schedule. Ohio State eventually answered on the field with a 27-9 win in November 2025, snapping Michigan’s four-game streak.

That is what makes the current fallout easier to understand. Portnoy’s removal did not come after one random jab. He had spent years making Ryan Day and Ohio State part of his content, then brought the same act onto FOX’s own stage in Columbus. The hostility was already well established long before his Big Noon Kickoff exit became a story.

Why FOX Had Little Room Left

From a business standpoint, Portnoy had become a risk-reward problem. His value came from attention, controversy, and access to Barstool’s audience. But FOX’s college football business is built on something much larger: premium rights, marquee programs, campus access and reliable production.

Ohio State is exactly the kind of property FOX cannot afford to complicate. FOX itself calls Big Noon Saturday its flagship college football game of the week, and says that window has been the most-watched in college football in three of the past four seasons. Big Noon Kickoff travels to campuses every Saturday to build directly into that product, which means access and cooperation are not side issues. They are part of the broadcast.

And Columbus has been one of FOX’s biggest stages. The network has previously built full on-site productions around Ohio State, with studio locations both outside and inside Ohio Stadium. In 2025, FOX once again took Big Noon Kickoff to Columbus for Ohio State-Texas, calling the matchup a battle between “two of college football’s most prominent programs.” That tells you how central Ohio State is to the network’s Saturday strategy.

The audience numbers make the gap even harder to ignore. Ohio State-Michigan averaged 18.4 million viewers on FOX in 2025, making it the most-watched game of that college football regular season and the second-most-watched college football game ever on the network. Big Noon Kickoff pulled 4.36 million viewers that same day, the second-biggest audience in the show’s history. Portnoy was part of that ecosystem, but he was never bigger than the product.

That is where the controversy became a business problem. FOX knew exactly who Portnoy was when it brought him in. The trolling, the Michigan loyalty and the chaos were part of the appeal. But if that same personality allegedly starts affecting access, cooperation or how easily FOX can operate around one of its biggest college football partners, the value proposition changes fast.

And FOX was not dealing with a one-off event either. Big Noon Kickoff is designed to move from campus to campus, with production crews, talent, access points and promotional plans all built in advance. Any recurring friction with a school like Ohio State can turn into more than bad feelings. It can become a logistics problem, a production problem and eventually a rights-relationship problem.

This is where FOX’s calculation becomes obvious. Portnoy could generate clips and attention. Ohio State could generate massive audiences, premium inventory, sponsorship value and one of the network’s most important college football environments. One was additive. The other was foundational.

So removing Portnoy looks less like a reaction to personality and more like protection of the bigger asset. Once the downside of keeping him allegedly started touching FOX’s core college football business, there was very little strategic reason to keep absorbing the risk.