“Stool Presidente” is coming to Provo, but the company he founded won’t be joining him this time around.
Dave Portnoy, the founder and owner of Barstool Sports, will be in attendance at Saturday’s football rivalry matchup between BYU and Utah as one of the panelists on Fox’s “Big Noon Kickoff” pregame show.
For six select games throughout the season, the “Barstool College Football Show” will travel to the “Big Noon” destination and broadcast live leading up to Fox’s pregame show, with Portnoy appearing on both programs.
When “Big Noon” came to Salt Lake City on Sept. 20 for Utah’s clash with Texas Tech, the Barstool show came along as well.
But Barstool won’t be returning to the Beehive State this weekend, as this is not one of the six games that their show will tag along with “Big Noon” for this year.
Some fans online had begun to speculate whether the absence of Barstool’s show in Provo this weekend had been influenced by some sort of “ban” from BYU.
When asked about the situation on X, Portnoy took the opportunity to squash the rumors.
“BYU did not ban Barstool,” Portnoy wrote in a post to X Thursday afternoon. “In fact quite the opposite. ”(BYU) requested the show. We only do six a year with (Big Noon Kickoff). “Just wasn’t in the cards but by all indications (BYU) really wanted (the Barstool show) and were even willing to offset the extra costs as long as we didn’t swear.”
Barstool Sports is known for crude humor and profanity on its programs. BYU is sponsored by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, with the school’s honor code including the “avoidance of profane and vulgar language.”
To make it clear that there is no bad blood between BYU and Barstool, Portnoy added that he lobbied “strongly” for “Big Noon” to come to Provo this weekend and added a photo of him on a flight out to the game.
Similar to his visit to Salt Lake City — which he said was his first time ever coming to the state of Utah — Portnoy is expected to sample various pizza restaurants in the Provo area for his famous “One Bite” pizza review videos.
Additionally, Portnoy often goes to the campus bookstore of each school he visits, having said Utah’s “gets the award for best bookstore I’ve been in so far.”
The competitive spirit of the rivalry apparently bleeds into each school’s bookstore, as Cougar fans have claimed to Portnoy that the BYU Store is superior.