Paul Finebaum, the popular SEC Network host, recently signed a contract extension at ESPN that’s given him more responsibilities and exposure, including more SportsCenter appearances and weekly trips to New York for “Get Up!” and “First Take.” In a lengthy phone conversation with Awful Announcing, Finebaum, 63, talked about how close he really was to leaving ESPN last summer, the perceived bias ESPN has towards the SEC, how college football has become more zero sum in the playoff era and the next huge change he thinks is coming to the sport.This interview has been edited for length and clarityYou’ve been doing this a long time. What keeps you motivated? Because even if you love what you do, there’s some point where you’re feeling a little burnt out in a sense.I think with me, I spent the majority of my career in Alabama, first as a sportswriter and on radio. So five years ago, joining ESPN was like a totally new world. I felt like I didn’t just hit reboot, I started all over again. And even though that’s not really the way it was, that’s how I looked at it. I just kind of went through that with bright eyes and every experience was really unique. And of course I just recently signed a new deal, so I’m doing different things.I think the key is, it’s almost like a template for every facet of life, by doing different things. My first year at ESPN, I did College Gameday and I was like in awe. And this year is like the second stanza of my run at ESPN. I’m going to New York every week and doing “Get Up!” and “First Take” and go to Bristol on the weekends and do SportsCenter. Even in my early 60s, these are still pretty exciting things for me. So I think that would be the long answer to a pretty simple question.That’s what keeps you driven…I haven’t lived in that many places, but going to New York, I walked in there for the first time three months ago and I was like wow, this is pretty cool. Doing the morning show with Mike Greenberg, then I’m doing Stephen A., I’m looking out at the Brooklyn Bridge right across to the borough where my mother grew up…I know this sounds kind of goofy from someone who’s occasionally been pretty cynical, but it still gets to me. And that’s hard to do. I’ve been to pretty much every football game you could go to, basketball game. And after a while, you’ve seen it all. But because this happened to me late in life, it probably means more than had I done this at an earlier age.Definitely. Everything in life that you have to work and toil for, you end up appreciating it more. You do. And I think because I had been told not even that long ago that this wasn’t probably happening. “You’re a local guy, you’re a regional guy.” I think even that probably has made this more meaningful. Look, I’m not gonna come off like I’m in a “Miss Congeniality” contest. There’s good with the bad, but it still means a lot to me, I will put it that way.You see people out there who say that ESPN is kind of biased towards the SEC. Do you agree?I don’t believe it. I just don’t see any evidence of it. I understand the arrangements. Of all people I would certainly understand that, having a daily show on the SEC Network. But I would like to know how that is so. A caller called in yesterday [Monday] and asked “why does Gary Danielson hate Alabama so much?” I go, “well, please give me one degree of specificity on what you’re talking about.” “Well, he just is,” he said. And I respond the same way to the general question with where is the bias? If you look at College Gameday, this is week 12, they’ve been to three SEC sites, Clemson-Texas A&M, Georgia-Florida and Alabama-LSU. I don’t see it, and if I did I’d say it. What do I care?It’s like somebody saying is Fox biased towards the Big 10? I watched the Big 10 championship last year and the announcers said the winner of this game is going to the playoffs. Well, that’s not true. And they didn’t go. So I would dispute that, and I’d want to have people show me the evidence.With you locked in to the SEC every week, what’s your process like in keeping track of the other conferences?Certainly five days a week in the afternoon, the show primarily deals with the SEC. But I’m following college football as broadly as I can with other appearances, whether it’s SportsCenter during the week or on the weekends or whatever else I do. And really after about the 4th or 5th week of the season, it’s not so much conference dominated as it is College Football Playoff dominated. So yeah, if you’re conversing on college football for any network, you have to know what’s going on elsewhere. And I watch the games like everyone else. No, I’m not going to Michigan games or Notre Dame games, but I certainly keep up with it as much as humanly possible.So you watch all these games, since we’re Awful Announcing I have to ask a broadcasting related question: Which announcers routinely tell you things that you don’t know, and which announcers make you want to press the mute button? The latest
AA Q&A: ESPN’s Paul Finebaum talks his new expanded role at the network, the SEC and biases, and more
Paul Finebaum talked to AA about his newly expanded role at ESPN, him almost leaving the network this summer, the SEC, and much more.
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