SEC Media Days can breed chaos unlike just about any other preseason college football event on the docket. On Wednesday, said chaos came from an exchange between Alabama Crimson Tide head coach Nick Saban and ESPN’s Paul Finebaum.
As Finebaum pressed Saban on why he has yet to suspend two players (Cam Robinson and Laurence Jones), Saban seemed to imply that the arrests of his players in a car with four people in it in Monroe, La. had a bit to do with their status as Alabama players and the state they were in.
It was a not-so veiled reference to the cops being LSU fans and that the bias of the purple and gold (or yellow) were responsible for the arrests and initial charges against just his players from the group inside that car.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNMqLWXk_uw
However, the Monroe Police department has shot back and refuted any alleged allegation of bias in its police department based on college football fandom.
“I can tell you for a fact that the first officer on the scene is not an LSU fan,” Chris Bates, the Monroe Police PIO, said Wednesday. “He hates LSU. He doesn’t like the color yellow or purple and gold. In fact, he’s a Florida fan. If you mention LSU around him, he throws up in his mouth. Most of our officers are LSU fans, but we have some who are Arkansas fans and Georgia fans and Alabama fans. And I’ll tell you this, the first officer did not even know those guys were players.”
That was but one part of the firestorm that was created on Wednesday though, as video (with difficult to hear audio) surfaced of a heated exchange between Finebaum and Saban following the SEC Network segment that was airing live.
In that heated exchange, AL.com was able to pick up the conversation as a writer was within earshot of the conversation had off-air.
Within earshot of media, Saban launched into a four-letter tirade directed at Finebaum. In it, he used his fingers to note the small amount of marijuana found in the car and insinuated the arresting officers were disgruntled LSU fans. Finebaum later confirmed the account on his national radio/television show.
However, most of this was set up with a backdrop of the ESPN personalities covering SEC Media Day getting caught in a hot-mic situation following Saban’s press conference in which no one in the media bothered to ask about the status of Cam Robinson.
In that exchange, one of the personalities is asking if Saban literally owns the media, and as the network came back from break the idea went out to the public, Finebaum flat out said Saban owned the media and confirmed the report of Saban insinuating the police were biased because they were LSU fans.
