Matt Leinart claps back at ‘dirtbag’ Dave Portnoy over USC rant

Dave Portnoy wasn’t in Iowa City on Saturday with the rest of the Big Noon Kickoff crew, but he still managed to find a way to tick one of them off.

The Barstool owner was in Starkville as Georgia visited Mississippi State, presumably because the University of Iowa didn’t want him in town. However, he appeared on BNK via satellite to offer his rant of the week —an Andy Rooney-esque complaint about college football rosters giving the same numbers to multiple players.

“I’ve had a problem with this. I don’t know when it started. I hate in college football how they’re giving out the same number on multiple teams. So you can have three number threes,” said Portnoy after the Iowa crowd booed him from afar. “Last night in USC against Northwestern, this problem came to a head. USC, who are dirtbags. They put out the punter. It looked like the punter wearing number 80. It was actually the third-string backup quarterback, and he threw a pass. This should be jail. You put out a guy, he looks like the punter. Oh, no, it’s a quarterback. Play goes for a first down. I don’t know when we started doing this.

“There should be one number one, one number two. Fine. You have over 100 guys, 101, 102, 103. But I don’t want to see Arch Manning, number 16 on Texas, and their safety wearing 16, and it leads to this, a fake punt that shouldn’t be a fake punt because you have a quarterback pretending to be a punter. What happened? When did this go on? Get rid of the double numbers. It’s got to go. It’s got to go.”

Former USC quarterback Matt Leinart was quick to clap back at Portnoy, putting the dirtbag label back on him.

“That’s Dave’s worst rant of the year. That’s a terrible rant, Dave,” said Leinart. “Dave Portnoy is the biggest dirtbag of all time. Am I right?

The Iowa crowd obliged Leinart and cheered in agreement.

Portnoy was referencing when USC quarterback Sam Huard took the field in a No. 80 jersey and appeared to line up just as punter Sam Johnson, who also wears No. 80, would. Huard then took the snap in punting formation, but completed a pass to Tanook Hines for 10 yards and a first down.

USC clearly tried to pull a fast one, waiting until gameday to change Huard’s number to No. 80 on the roster submitted to Northwestern. Northwestern coach David Braun admitted after the game that, even though he was still No. 7 on the unofficial online version, Huard was No. 80 on the roster his team was given.

“One of their backup quarterbacks, No. 7, was wearing No. 80, the same number as their punter. Did not show up on their roster online, hadn’t shown up anywhere else, but they did legally submit that,” Braun said. “Was on the game day roster that was here present at the Coliseum, and the lesson I’ve learned in that for the rest of my career is when we arrive at a facility, we will go over that with a fine-tooth comb and look for any of those potential issues. If we knew that their backup quarterback was in the game in that situation, we either would have been in safe [punt coverage] or called a timeout.”

Many college football rosters indeed have multiple players wearing the same number. It’s not against any rules, so long as two players wearing numbers aren’t on the field at the same time. And USC likely benefitted in part from being one of the few schools that don’t put names on the back of their jerseys.

One thing we know for sure is that this is the second week a Big Noon Kickoff analyst has taken a swipe at Portnoy. Last week, Mark Ingram called out how the Barstool founder “don’t know ball.”