ESPN’s Paul Finebaum on the SEC’s failures and why Ohio State will pound Notre Dame in CFP
Deep in a Charlotte TV studio, churning out 20 hours worth of live national television every week, a man named Paul Finebaum sits at his desk and helps spin the college football world on its axis.
“The Paul Finebaum Show” is televised Monday through Friday from 3-7 p.m. on SEC Network, which is owned by ESPN. Finebaum, a former newspaper columnist who moved to Charlotte in 2013, is its opinionated star. But he shares that spotlight with as many as 50 passionate callers per day, turning a show that originates from Charlotte’s Ballantyne area into a real-time sounding board about the best and worst of college football.
Never short of a point of view, Finebaum has all kinds of theories he shared in our interview: Why Ohio State is about to crush Notre Dame by “two or three touchdowns” in Monday night’s college football championship game, for instance. And why his beloved SEC has failed to get a team into the playoff final for the second straight year. And why SMU and Indiana didn’t belong in this year’s 12-team College Football Playoff but South Carolina did.
But while the “Mouth of the South” can pontificate with the best of them, Finebaum also doesn’t take himself too seriously. He laughs about the perception that he is an apologist for the SEC, understanding that because he’s the face of the SEC Network, that’s going to come with the territory.
“I don’t get overly hung up on it,” Finebaum said in our interview. “.... The old line used to be that I spent my day at (former Alabama coach) Nick Saban’s guest house. Now they think I’m in (SEC commissioner) Greg Sankey’s guest house, having my meals delivered on the porch.”
Long college football’s preeminent conference, the Saban-less SEC now finds itself in a strange spot. For the second year in a row, the conference that dominated college football for the past two decades won’t have a representative in college football’s championship game Monday night. (In 2024, Michigan beat Washington in the final).
What would Finebaum do if the SEC goes a third straight year without placing a team in the final in 2026?
“If we’re sitting here a year from today saying that the SEC is still not in the championship, I’m not sure I’ll be able to continue,” Finebaum said. “I will be in a fetal position at that point, and I will be communicating through some other means than verbal. You will only hear me balled up, hysterically crying, inconsolable and probably finished forever.”
The callers and the dump button
He’s joking, of course. In August, Finebaum signed what he said was a three-year contract extension with ESPN and the SEC Network that will take him into his 70s. (Google will tell you Finebaum is 69, but he prefers to say he’s “in my late 60s”). And Finebaum doesn’t seem to be going anywhere anytime soon, which is a good thing, because he has carved a unique niche in the sports universe.
Finebaum looks more like Mr. Burns from “The Simpsons” than the actor Ted Danson. But for the sport of college football, which in America is second only to the NFL by most metrics, Finebaum plays a role that is a little bit like the one Danson’s Sam Malone did behind the bar in the sitcom “Cheers.” On his eponymous show, Finebaum greets dozens of people a day, makes them feel at home, serves them something familiar and is quick with a one-liner if he needs to move on.
On the phone in front of him on set, Finebaum has what the show’s producers call the “dump button.” He can hang up on a caller at any time for any reason. (There’s also a 10-second delay baked into the show, so don’t get any ideas). But in reality, Finebaum gives far more time to listening to the average fan than practically any other national sports TV show.
Finebaum’s callers are a loosely-knit community, with one-name sobriquets like “Legend” and “Bash” and “Smokey.” When he originated this show in Alabama, he would host Christmas parties for them. He’s given eulogies at several of their funerals.
Some of the most frequent callers often send in their head shot, and the show’s efficient producers then display that photo when the caller rings in again the next time. People phone in from oil rigs, from Ohio, from California and, most often, from the South.
The show’s most infamous caller ever, an Alabama fan named Harvey Updyke, said he had poisoned two beloved oak trees on the Auburn campus. It turned out he actually had done so and would eventually go to prison for it. That was in 2011, back when Finebaum’s talk show was more of a regional phenomenon than a national one.
One reason “The Paul Finebaum Show” has succeeded (on both TV and on radio, where it is still simulcast today) is that his callers are mostly the salt-of-the-earth types who comprise the majority of college football fans. Many of are “sidewalk alumni,” meaning they did not attend the school they feel so passionately about. As Finebaum said on Pablo Torre’s recent podcast, his audience by and large isn’t reading The New York Times or listening to NPR. And he has obvious affection for them.
“Our callers are not sitting in David Tepper’s box on Sunday,” Finebaum said, referring to the Carolina Panthers’ owner.
To put it another way, as Finebaum has said, he found this audience before Donald Trump did.
An Ohio State beatdown
But let’s get back to the present day, and to Finebaum’s current opinions: First, about the upcoming national championship game and why Ohio State is about to smash Notre Dame.
“It just doesn’t seem like it’s going to be close,” Finebaum said. “Ohio State got its bad game out of the way against Texas. I mean, they only won by 14. ... And it’s hard to imagine that Ohio State can play as poorly as they did. ... And Notre Dame is really not in the same league as Ohio State when it comes to talent. ... It seems like a two- or three-touchdown game.”
As for why the SEC had all its teams knocked out in the CFP this year and didn’t reach the final, Finebaum said: “I think there are a lot of things that went wrong. I think it starts with the most important position. There’s no elite quarterback this year in the SEC. You started out thinking that (Georgia QB) Carson Beck would be it, or (Texas QB) Quinn Ewers. Turned out that neither one even made first team all-SEC. But if you really want to blame one thing in particular — and I will — it is one person’s fault that the SEC is not in the championship game, and that is Nick Saban. The nerve of Saban to retire and leave the SEC bereft of elite coaches! it’s just downright shameful.”
That’s a typical Finebaum rant — a handful of facts, delivered adroitly and topped with a zinger at the end. Saban won six national championships at Alabama and another one at LSU, and Alabama is still trying to figure out what it is without him. He’s now one of Finebaum’s colleagues at ESPN.
Four more Finebaum opinions
Here are four more rapid-fire Finebaum opinions, delivered in our interview:
▪ Of the three SEC teams in the discussion but left out of the 12-team CFP this year — Alabama, Ole Miss and South Carolina — the one that actually should have made it over SMU or Indiana was the Gamecocks. “They would have made some noise in the playoffs,” Finebaum said. “That was the unfortunate thing for the Gamecocks — they were the best one of the three (SEC schools in contention) at the end of the year.”
▪ The ideal number of CFP teams isn’t the current 12, nor the likely-soon-to-be 14. It is actually eight. “There are a lot of schools that don’t belong,” Finebaum said.
▪ The best college football game he ever saw in person was the Auburn-Alabama “Kick Six” Iron Bowl game of 2013.
▪ If you asked 100 sports fans with no allegiance to Ohio State or Notre Dame who they want to win Monday night’s final, at least 75 of them would say “Notre Dame.” Why? Because of the perception that Ohio State just went out and bought an all-star team with $20 million in NIL money. “As if everyone else isn’t paying for players,” Finebaum scoffed.
‘Can I see the end?’
This is one of Finebaum’s favorite times on the sports calendar, when the college football season roars to the finish line. But there are also slower times. The show has to fill those same 20 hours every week in May, when spring football is long over and the 2025 regular season is still three months away.
Finebaum’s wife, Linda Hudson, is a doctor for Atrium Health, specializing in internal medicine. He could quit tomorrow and be just fine. And he has certainly thought about retirement.
“It’s a fair question, it should be asked and my wife and I talk about it all the time,” Finebaum said. “But I really love what I’m doing.”
Finebaum said he plans to fulfill his recent three-year contract extension and, beyond that, isn’t sure what the future holds.
“Can I see the end at some point? Absolutely,” he said. “I am not going to be that old sportswriter that I saw as a 25-year-old who falls asleep during the SEC championship game. But I’m having a blast right now.”
