The Dave Portnoy saga shows Michigan still lives rent-free in Ohio State’s head

Ohio State‘s epic season-opener against Texas in Ohio Stadium on Saturday is the first time the Buckeyes take the field since winning a national title in Atlanta at the end of last year.

On the north end of Ohio Stadium, there’s currently a covered sign displaying the year 2024. Before the game, Ohio State will unveil that sign to the crowd of more than 100,000 amped-up fans to proudly present another Buckeyes national championship. The crowd is going to erupt as it relives last year’s incredible run in the College Football Playoff.

You know what Ohio State should have done as an accent to that pregame ceremony? It should have set FOX’s set for “Big Noon Kickoff” directly under that sign and lovingly invited Barstool’s Dave Portnoy, the show’s latest panel member, to sit right in the middle of the scene.

That’s trolling. That’s sports.

Instead, the Internet caught on fire last night as reports began circulating that Ohio State banned Portnoy from the stadium. On Tuesday, Ohio State athletic director Ross Bjork told Yahoo! Sports’ Ross Dellenger that FOX — not Ohio State — made the decision to not include Portnoy on the main desk inside the stadium. The Big Ten also told Dellenger that Portnoy isn’t expected to be included on the main panel in any stadium all year.

FOX, of course, probably won’t address it at all. It has nothing to gain. It’s trying to compete with ESPN’s College GameDay, which will be airing Lee Corso’s final episode. They want as many curious viewers as possible to watch their show. So right now, we have a good, old-fashioned he-said, she-said situation.

Ohio State fans will, obviously, believe Portnoy — a rabid Michigan fan known for talking trash to Ohio State — is lying. There’s nothing anybody on earth could say or write to change their minds on that.

But there’s something else that happened. Barstool’s College Football Show, which travels around the country every year for pregame tailgates, was informed that it wasn’t permitted on Ohio State’s campus. That, of course, is out of FOX’s purview.

This entire situation, though, should remind us of what is hurting Ohio State the most in the rivalry with Michigan. The Wolverines, a team the Buckeyes dominated for all of the previous two decades, own too much real estate in Ohio State’s head.

Portnoy’s entire shtick is to make videos taunting Ohio State, which have become far more typical during the Wolverines’ current four-game winning streak in the best rivalry in sports. Portnoy is loud and rambunctious and, at times, even disrespectful, but what do you expect from a Michigan fan who has been waiting his entire adult life to beat Ohio State?

FOX hired that man to rival ESPN’s Pat McAfee. He isn’t a football analyst. He’s a fan who says crazy stuff that winds people up. He’s a showman.

Ohio State football is a form of entertainment. The Buckeyes lost again last year. Own it. Fight fire with fire. Don’t just let Portnoy come – lovingly invite him to come — into a hostile Ohio Stadium, fire people up and then shower him with the pride of winning a national title. Show no signs of weakness. No signs of restriction. No limit on his company’s show to set up in Columbus.

You know what message that sends?

“We’re not scared.” Then yell it again. And again. And again.

That’s the message you need to send as a university. That’s the message you want your football team to adopt as it ramps up for another season with national title aspirations. You don’t want to let your opponent — your rival — feel too important or too big, even if it hurts like hell that you haven’t beaten them in four years.

There may be some pushback to this column, but there’s nothing that will ever convince me that Ohio State lost last year’s game for any other reason than the emotional toll it took on head coach Ryan Day and the players. Yes, Michigan had Kenneth Grant and Mason Graham a year ago, but the Buckeyes were the deepest and most talented team in college football, and it looked like they had completely forgotten how to play football.

Losing to that Michigan team was one of the most shocking results in The Game’s history, if not in the history of college football. The result of that game got even more shocking every single time the Buckeyes beat the crap out of an elite opponent during their remarkable run in the College Football Playoff.

There’s nothing Day or anyone on the team can do this year to erase what happened. You can call them cheaters and bask in the glow of the NCAA sanctions the Wolverines were hit with a few weeks ago, but last year’s edition of The Game — and the previous three — still happened. They’re in the history books.

What can’t happen moving forward is the same mental stranglehold the Wolverines have seemingly had on Ohio State for the last four years. You saw it on their faces in Ohio Stadium last December. You can’t see those faces again.

You’d think the national championship would wash some of that regret away. Maybe it did.

But if Portnoy is the enemy and he’s going to say mean things in your stadium, let him and then fight it. Don’t do anything under any circumstance that results in making him or Michigan feel more important than they are.

If someone did, in fact, make the decision to ban Portnoy weeks ago, what was the upside to that decision? It was only going to make Ohio State look soft and scared. And the result would be giving Portnoy exactly what he wants — attention and fodder to create another viral video.

Guess what? You got one. Portnoy released a five-minute video in which the usual insults were rampant.

“Obviously when the story broke, everyone was like, ‘Oh my God Ohio State is so fucking soft, Michigan broke them, Woody Hayes is rolling around in his grave, if you can’t beat them, ban them,'” Portnoy said in a nearly six-minute clip posted Tuesday. “This is my advice and this is why we kick your ass inside out every single Thanksgiving Day weekend. Stop pussyfooting. Stop making excuses. Stop crying about planting flags. … Own up.”

Maybe this is FOX’s decision or maybe Ohio State made the bone-headed decision to ban him.

It doesn’t even really matter.

What does matter is Michigan continues to be in Ohio State’s head.

That’s the thing that has to change.