PAUL FINEBAUM IS A TRUMPER, MEANING ESPN WILL KICK HIM TOWARD A SENATE SEAT
He's a brilliant college football analyst, but as he supports Trump amid the Charlie Kirk shooting, he can’t stay at the network — where Iger is at war with the President after the Jimmy Kimmel farce
Other than hoisting Bob Iger into the flames of a relentless inferno, Paul Finebaum found the sweetest, most Trumpian way of leaving ESPN. He told a website that he’ll never say no — to the President — if he is asked to run for a U.S. Senate seat in Alabama. In Iger’s world, anyone who honors Donald Trump after the Jimmy Kimmel farce is a political villain.
“Impossible to tell him no,” Finebaum told Outkick. “There’s no way I could. I would tell him yes.”
Well, say hello to Greg McElroy as your next studio college football expert. If Finebaum shows up today, he should wave Trump posters. He is a brilliant commentator, capable of calling Jim Harbaugh “a total fraud in everything he said” at Michigan and prepared to trash any Southeastern Conference religious cauldron. But as the network embraces the practice of promoting conferences and teams, he’s smart enough to know he will anger someone in power. Only Stephen A. Smith and Pat McAfee get away with that brainstream — and they have their limits — and I’m not sure what would happen if SEC commissioner Greg Sankey or Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti wanted Finebaum off the air.
What he has done, in dividing his broadcast audience, is break the cardinal rule at the network. All employees are told not to talk about politics. He has done so, explaining how his life was changed by the shooting death of Charlie Kirk. Finebaum’s political views don’t interest me; I want his take on the future of Penn State’s James Franklin and Lane Kiffin at Ole Miss. America will have to settle for his Senate ambitions.
“It’s hard to describe, not being involved in politics, how that affected me and affected tens of millions of people all over this country. And it was an awakening,” Finebaum said of Kirk. “I spent four hours numb, talking about things that didn’t matter to me. And it kept building throughout that weekend. I felt very empty doing what I was doing that day.”
As he mourned, he received phone calls that might take him away from true journalism, part of his life since his days as a Birmingham columnist. “One or two people in Washington had reached out to me about whether I would be interested in politics, something I never thought about before,” Finebaum said. “Something I didn’t really think possible. I gave some thought to it (after Kirk’s murder) unfolded and got a little bit more interested.”
Certainly, Trump has pounced. Join the club, Paul. “The biggest issue is the direction of ‘Where are we going (as a nation)?’ And I don’t like some of that. When I watch a newscast, I know how biased it is because I do this for a living,” he said. “That’s incredibly disturbing. But I keep all this to myself. I feel this is a cathartic conversation for me because I’m saying some things that I really did not intend to say when I walked in this room.”
He said them. What else would we expect? He and his wife returned to Alabama after years in Charlotte, N.C. “I’ve never said this before, but why am I going to hold this back?” Finebaum said. “I just moved and registered in Alabama, but I am a registered Republican in North Carolina as of this hour. I was a registered Republican in Alabama before I moved.”
When former Auburn basketball coach Bruce Pearl said he wasn’t interested in a Senate run, Finebaum jumped at the opportunity. “I was hesitant at first because I was very aware of Bruce’s interest and (I am a) huge fan of Bruce. I didn’t take it too seriously,” Finebaum said. “I ended up talking to someone who made it clear that there was a desire for me to be involved. And this person … was compelling and compassionate in the approach to me, and I started thinking about this.”
He is the voice of the Deep South. ESPN hired the right man. Now, he’s the wrong man. Why battle Disney boss Iger and sidekick Jimmy Pitaro?
“Alabama has always been the place I’ve felt the most welcome, that I’ve cared the most about the people,” he said. “I have spoken to people from Alabama for 35 years, and I feel there is a connection that is hard to explain.”
Now we know why he was wearing wild jeans at a square dance last week.
He is a former broadcaster.
He’s a Trumper, people.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.