Former ESPN sportscaster Jason Whitlock knows the brutal reality of the business because he has been there twice. Despite being an influential sports columnist for ESPN.com, the organization fired him after his no-holds-barred Big Lead interview. Nevertheless, Whitlock built his personal brand independently.
Watch What’s Trending Now!
So much so that ESPN President John Skipper made a radical decision to hire him again in 2013. That ride, again, was far from smooth, and he parted ways in 2015. So, he knows a thing or two about the brutal reality of the broadcasting job that took Michigan donor Dave Portnoy’s FOX Sports job.
“Dave Portnoy blames Ryan Day for losing his Fox Sports job, and Portnoy, he’s lying to himself,” Whitlock said on his podcast on October 6. “OSU didn’t fire Dave Portnoy from Big Noon Kickoff. The American Living Room fired [him].”
The Barstool Sports founder pointed toward Ohio State and Ryan Day. He said the Buckeyes had complained to the Big Ten and pressured Fox until the network decided Portnoy was no longer worth the trouble.
Portnoy later expanded on the claim, saying Ohio State had viewed him as a major headache and had repeatedly pushed back on his presence around the program. But that is only one version of what happened.
“Your smartphone rewards opposite behavior, and that Collision explains why Barstool was always doomed on broadcast TV while remaining dominant online,” Whitlock said. “Dave Portnoy belongs to the phone, not the couch.”
Portnoy entered the Fox partnership with plenty of leverage. Fox and Barstool announced their agreement before the 2025 season, with Portnoy becoming a regular contributor to Big Noon Kickoff while Barstool’s college football show also joined Fox’s platforms.
Barstool does not ask its audience to accept Portnoy in a neutral environment. Its audience chooses him. It goes looking for the jokes, arguments, gambling talk, insults, and provocations. A national television show works differently.
Fox is putting Big Noon Kickoff into homes before a college football game. That means the audience is not limited to people who specifically want Barstool. Some are watching because Ohio State is playing.
Others are there for the game preview. Others simply leave the television on while the family gets ready for Saturday. That changes the calculation. Moreover, attention and television comfort are not the same thing.
“Television is an invitation into your home. The man on Fox at noon sits at your table with your wife, your kids, and your grandmother. He has to be welcome in mixed company,” Whitlock said. “Barstool built an empire doing the opposite.”
Big Noon Kickoff had a good 2025 season by the numbers. Fox said the show averaged 1.8 million viewers in the hour before kickoff, the highest average in its history and a 14% jump from 2024.
Some of the biggest broadcasts pulled in much bigger numbers. The Ohio State-Michigan show in December reached 4.36 million viewers, making it the second-most-watched episode in the show’s history.
So, Fox didn’t need Portnoy to bring in viewers. The real question was whether having him around was worth the problems that followed. Whitlock also brought Pat McAfee into the comparison.
“Portnoy also lacks the broadcast versatility of Pat McAfee,” he said, calling McAfee a “chameleon” who can adjust to different settings.
McAfee is an obvious counterexample because he has built an enormous personality-driven media business while also becoming a regular part of ESPN’s biggest college football broadcasts. Never mind the reported $60 million annual contract.
College GameDay averaged 2.7 million viewers during its record-setting 2025 season, and ESPN said the program was up 25% year over year. The show has also continued to post strong numbers in 2026.
McAfee can still be loud. He can still be profane. He can still push against the edges of what a traditional sports broadcast normally looks like. But he can change gears.
“Portnoy has one gear,” Whitlock said, describing that gear as “grievance mixed with degeneracy.” That may be unfair to Portnoy’s entire body of work, but it gets at the problem Fox appears to have encountered.
Still, Barstool has not been erased from Fox. Its weekday Wake Up Barstool program remains on FS1. So, the relationship between the companies has not completely collapsed. The decision is specifically about Barstool’s presence on Big Noon Kickoff.
That makes the Ohio State explanation harder to treat as the entire story. Ohio State clearly had a complicated history with Portnoy. The school has restricted his access to The Shoe twice.
Yet, Portnoy has spent years targeting the Buckeyes and Day as a Michigan supporter. Those tensions almost certainly did not make his position on Fox easier. But friction is not the same thing as causation.