WASHINGTON, D.C. — The first caller up on Paul Finebaum’s SEC Network show Monday wanted, naturally, to talk about SEC football. But first, Phillip from Memphis had a message for the host.
“Most importantly, I want to tell you, and I’ve been trying to follow the controversy or the questions about your career,” Phillip said. “I just wanted to tell you wherever you go, whatever you do, your friends are gonna follow. They’re going to miss the connection with the SEC, but if you wind up as the docent of the Patriot League or wherever you go, we’ll find you.”
Then it was Millie from Rolla, Mo., who seems to call in at some point darn near every day, and on this day had a pointed message for Finebaum, who is as closely associated with the SEC as any sports media personality is with a conference.
“I hope you stay with the studio because if you don’t, I’ll never watch the SEC again!” she declared.
As the SEC prepares for its annual Media Days kickoff event next week, the biggest story in the league has nothing to do with a player or coach. Instead, it’s whether a bald, bespectacled former newspaper columnist is on the verge of leaving the SEC Network and taking both his influential show and devoted audience of listeners somewhere else — perhaps even to the Big Ten.
Though the thought of Finebaum abandoning the SEC for the Big Ten might seem ridiculous for someone who was tabbed “King of the South” by the New Yorker, wrote a book titled “My Conference Can Beat Your Conference” and seems take a fair amount of pleasure in bashing Michigan’s Jim Harbaugh, the facts are these.
Finebaum’s contract with the ESPN-owned SEC Network runs out at the end of this month. There are multiple reports, citing anonymous people, indicating that negotiations between Finebaum’s representatives and the network have been contentious. And if Finebaum were to become a free agent, he would have some interesting and unique suitors. According to the Sporting News, that would include Fox, which co-owns the Big Ten Network.
Reached by phone Tuesday, Finebaum declined comment on his future, other than to say he expects to be on set Monday in Atlanta when SEC Media Days begins. One person familiar with the matter from the ESPN side, who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the discussions, called the story overblown and said the speculation of his departure was unsubstantiated. Even if Finebaum and ESPN can’t come to terms by next week, the plan seems to be business as usual.
But that would be wholly unrealistic because, as absurd as it may seem to those who aren’t deeply connected to the culture of the SEC, Finebaum’s potential departure would hang over the entire event.
And it’s not so much that the SEC would fall apart if Finebaum left its main propaganda arm (it certainly wouldn’t) or that Nick Saban would stop winning championships if Finebaum took his talents elsewhere.
It’s the sense that for as much as the SEC has changed in the past decade – it’s become bigger, more corporate; even media day itself is moving to Atlanta from its longtime home in Birmingham – Finebaum’s show and the cast of characters who populate its orbit are one of the few remaining connections between an increasingly sterile, personality-defunct league and its colorful, blue-collar fan base.
Not only that, ESPN making Finebaum the SEC Network’s premiere personality when it launched in 2014 kind of elevated those fans to objects of fascination, the very existence of which explained to the country why the SEC was different from other leagues.
“I’m sure there are 20-somethings in Connecticut who sit there and watch five minutes and are aghast and have no idea what it is they’re seeing,” said Cecil Hurt, the longtime columnist and sports editor of the Tuscaloosa News. “There was a time in history and technology where that fan had no Twitter to go on, no Facebook to go on, so they called radio shows. For a certain segment of a very devoted college football fan base in the SEC, Paul is just part of it, and there aren’t many 25-year old traditions out there anymore. There’s not much that connects today with SEC football as it was in 1995, and Paul is that link.”
More than likely, Finebaum will continue to be that link. The prevailing sense within the industry is that Finebaum and ESPN will find a way to get a deal done because, if nothing else, it makes little sense to end a relationship that has been good for both sides.
In the meantime, Finebaum will likely have to continue listening to the tributes from callers while revealing very little about the situation until the future of his show is certain.
As he said on his show Monday: “I think it’s all going to work out great.”
