“Stool Presidente” is coming to Provo, but the company he founded won’t be joining him this time.
Dave Portnoy, founder and owner of Barstool Sports, will attend Saturday’s football rivalry showdown 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 air live before Fox’s pregame show, with Portnoy appearing on both shows.
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When “Big Noon” arrived in Salt Lake City on September 20 for Utah’s clash with Texas Tech, so did the Barstool show.
But Barstool will not be returning to the Beehive State this weekend, as this is not one of the six games its schedule will include 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 type of BYU “ban.”
When asked about the situation at X, Portnoy took the opportunity to squash the rumors.
“BYU did not ban Barstool,” Portnoy wrote in a post on X Thursday afternoon. “In fact, quite the opposite,” the (BYU) program requested. We only do six a year with (Big Noon Kickoff). “It just wasn’t in the cards, but from all indications (BYU) really wanted (the Barstool show) and was even willing to offset the additional costs as long as we didn’t swear.”
Barstool Sports is known for crude humor and bad language on its shows. BYU is sponsored by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and the school’s honor code includes “avoiding profane and vulgar language.”
To make it clear that there is no bad blood between BYU and Barstool, Portnoy added that he pushed “hard” for “Big Noon” to come to Provo this weekend and added a photo of him on a flight to the game.
Similar to his visit to Salt Lake City, which he said was his first time coming to the state of Utah, Portnoy is expected to try several pizzerias in the Provo area to watch his famous “One Bite” pizza review videos.
Additionally, Portnoy frequently goes to the campus bookstore of each school he visits and says Utah “gets the award for the best bookstore I’ve been to so far.”
The competitive spirit of rivalry apparently permeates each school’s bookstore, as Cougar fans have claimed to Portnoy that the BYU store is superior.