David Samson doesn’t think Ohio State had anything to do with Fox dumping Dave Portnoy
· Yahoo Sports
On Friday, we learned that Fox Sports was moving on from having Dave Portnoy on Big Noon Kickoff after a season and a half.
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According to The Athletic’s Andrew Marchand, “there was no smoking gun other than that the constant challenge of trying to unite Fox Sports’ more traditional show with Barstool’s persona proved unsustainable,” citing the example of the prominent Michigan booster’s many “disputes over his presence at Ohio State home games, with reports last year saying he was banned from being in the stadium.”
Portnoy was more specific in his announcement, saying that Ohio State had demanded Fox remove him from BNK. He pushed that notion further on Monday, claiming to Front Office Sports that OSU told Fox Sports it would “make your life hell if you keep working with Dave Portnoy.”
Portnoy often trolled Ohio State during his Big Noon Kickoff appearances and has made several unsubstantiated accusations against the football program and head coach Ryan Day over the years.
Meadowlark Media’s David Samson doesn’t have a dog in this fight, but he thinks the Ohio State accusations are a smokescreen meant to distract from the fact that the arrangement never made sense to begin with.
“Do I think Ohio State would have called Fox to complain about things that Portnoy was saying? I do. Do I think that Fox then removed Portnoy because of what Ohio State asked them to do? I don’t,” Samson said on the latest episode of Nothing Personal. “Fox removed Portnoy for the sole reason that the fit was not worth it, period. It didn’t mix well with the other hosts. It didn’t mix well with the audience. It didn’t set the tone that Portnoy wants to set with his shows, and bringing that tone to the pregame show is not at all interesting for those watching.
“… So when people are talking to you about things that happened, just keep in mind one thing important: that when you are firing somebody, your reasons are not always going to be as apparent to others as they are to you.
“My guess is this was a long time coming, and Portnoy tried to get ahead of it in a way that only he can because he’s got really good PR people inside his head. He said, ‘Juice wasn’t worth the squeeze, and frankly, I don’t blame them. Huge dollars at stake, and you’ve got crying Ryan throwing temper tantrums and making threats every few days on something I said.’
“Portnoy’s trying to get you to believe that it was all about his contentious relationship with Ohio State. Fox is not making the change because Ohio State got angrier because they felt the juice wasn’t worth the squeeze. There are way, way bigger financial things involved than that.”
As for where the truth lies, we may never know. It stands to reason that Ohio State’s status as Fox’s college football golden goose probably had some impact, but Samson is likely right to presume that everyone looked around and realized the Barstool-Fox Sports relationship just isn’t paying dividends.
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