Dave Portnoy did not quietly disappear from FOX’s Big Noon Kickoff. According to him, Ohio State wanted him gone, with Ryan Day sitting right at the center of the drama. Portnoy claims the Buckeyes effectively forced FOX to choose between keeping college football’s loudest Michigan troll around for a few minutes of airtime or risking cooperation from one of the biggest brands in the sport. Tough choice, apparently.

FOX made its move, Portnoy got pushed aside, and now he is making sure everyone knows exactly who he believes was pulling the strings: Ryan Day.

The tension between the two has been building ever since Portnoy joined the show. “Ohio State has relentlessly complained to Fox,” Portnoy said in the Front Office Sports interview on October 5.

Portnoy made his Big Noon Kickoff debut in August 2025, and naturally, he chose Columbus as the place to poke the bear. Instead of keeping things civil, he walked in singing Michigan’s fight song, “The Victors,” and even had a “Still Can’t Beat Michigan” shirt hidden under his hoodie. Subtle was never really the plan. So when Portnoy says Ohio State eventually decided it had seen enough, he could hardly pretend he had spent the last year trying to make friends.

The backlash apparently started almost immediately. According to Portnoy, once FOX announced the partnership, Ohio State showed network executives a 30 to 45-minute compilation of him ripping the Buckeyes and Ryan Day. That is a lot of tape for someone who supposedly did not matter.

Behind the scenes, the relationship had already turned into a full-blown power struggle. Portnoy says repeated complaints from Ohio State led to him being shifted around, sidelined and moved to different locations. Columbus was supposed to be one of those stops, but even that appearance was eventually pulled. At some point, this stopped looking like normal rivalry banter and started looking personal.

“I was getting ready to go out there, and they told me to stay home because Ohio State had basically said, ‘If Dave’s there, we won’t cooperate in any aspect of the show,’” Portnoy told Front Office Sports. Portnoy believes the pressure moved from Ohio State to the Big Ten and then to FOX. That is not exactly a small complaint. That is leverage.

And this was not one direct screaming match between Portnoy and Day either. Portnoy says he has never personally spoken with Ohio State or the Big Ten about the issue. According to him, the complaints traveled through conference and network channels, with FOX stuck in the middle trying to keep everybody happy.

FOX apparently did try to cool things down. Portnoy himself said the network attempted to smooth over the relationship, even discussing the possibility of having him interview Day when the partnership first began. That peace summit never exactly materialized. Instead, according to Portnoy, the complaints kept coming until he believes FOX decided the headache was no longer worth it.

And once Portnoy learned on October 1 that he was being removed from the show, he wasted no time blaming Day for the mess. When Front Office Sports later asked what reason FOX gave him for his removal, Portnoy’s answer could not have been much shorter: “Ohio State.”

And FOX had plenty of reasons to listen. The network is one of the central partners in the Big Ten’s seven-year media rights package, which runs through the 2029-30 athletic year and is worth billions across FOX, CBS and NBC. When that much money is involved, keeping one recurring personality happy is obviously not going to rank above protecting a relationship with one of the conference’s biggest programs.

Ohio State also brings the kind of audience networks obsess over. With the Buckeyes consistently drawing massive viewership, FOX had very little incentive to let a Portnoy feud become an even bigger problem. So if the choice really came down to Ohio State or a few minutes of Portnoy on Saturday morning, the decision was never that complicated. Portnoy was entertaining. Ohio State was valuable.

Portnoy basically acknowledged that math himself. He said he was only getting around 10 minutes of airtime on Big Noon Kickoff and questioned why FOX would keep dealing with constant complaints when billions of dollars were tied to its relationship with the Big Ten. In other words, Portnoy may have been good television, but he was never going to be worth turning one of FOX’s biggest college football relationships into a weekly hostage negotiation.

What does Dave Portnoy believe is the reason for Ryan Day’s resentment towards him?

The bad blood between Portnoy and Ryan Day was never exactly difficult to spot. Michigan versus Ohio State already comes with enough venom, and Portnoy has spent years pouring gasoline on it. He said he was only getting roughly 10 minutes of airtime on FOX, yet according to him, the complaints kept coming.

Portnoy is not some neutral media personality either. He is a loud Michigan alumnus and prominent supporter who has repeatedly gone after Day across his platforms, calling him “Cryin’ Ryan,” questioning his toughness and branding him soft whenever the opportunity presented itself. So yes, there was already plenty of bad blood. But Portnoy believes one incident pushed this well beyond normal rivalry trolling.

“From what I gather, Ryan Day thinks I ‘doxxed’ him,” Portnoy told Front Office Sports on October 5. “I’ve heard that a lot from not only Fox people but also people here in Nantucket. I’m not 100% sure he knows how the internet works, and I don’t even mean that facetiously.”

Portnoy was referring to the chaos surrounding the Connor Stalions investigation, when reporting and speculation emerged about possible links between private investigators looking into Michigan and members of Day’s family. Portnoy says he simply discussed a story that was already circulating heavily in the Michigan-Ohio State world. In his telling, Day came away believing Portnoy had created or personally exposed the story himself.

That, Portnoy believes, is where the rivalry stopped being just rivalry. If his version is accurate, the problem was no longer simply that he loved Michigan and mocked Ohio State. He believes it had become personal.