Even Paul Finebaum’s regular callers are wondering why he hasn’t made any appearances on ESPN outside of his SEC Network show.
Last week, longtime ESPN college football analyst and SEC fanatic Paul Finebaum announced that he may be interested in running for the United States Senate seat being vacated by former Auburn football coach Tommy Tuberville during an interview with Clay Travis on OutKick.
Finebaum says entertaining the decision was sparked by a number of things, including the assassination of Charlie Kirk and his recent move back to the state of Alabama:
“I’ve never said this before, but why am I going to hold this back? I just moved and registered in Alabama, but I am a registered Republican in North Carolina as of this hour. And I was a registered Republican in Alabama before I moved.”
Strangely enough, after that interview aired, Paul Finebaum went missing from his regular appearances on ESPN. Finebaum usually recaps the college football Saturday on Sunday morning episodes of Sportscenter, but did not this past weekend. He was also supposed to be a part of ESPN’s Get Up morning show last Thursday, and ended up not appearing. That led many to speculate that ESPN had removed Paul Finebaum from their programming because of his “political interview.”
OutKick’s Clay Travis reported this morning that ESPN and its parent company (Disney) had removed Finebaum from their shows after he announced that he was interested in running for the Senate seat as a Republican:
If you believe Travis’ sources, then that’s a pretty bad look from the “Worldwide Leader in Sports.”
However, ESPN Vice President Bill Hofheimer quickly came out not even an hour later and disputed the reporting from Clay Travis and OutKick, saying that Finebaum being sidelined from ESPN programming was not true and totally false:
And that’s all fine and dandy to say… but it doesn’t look like ESPN exactly backed up that messaging earlier today.
The good news is that Paul Finebaum’s show – The Paul Finebaum Show – did air on the SEC Network on ESPN in its regularly scheduled time slot. The bad news? It appeared as though the network was throttling certain calls, and preventing Finebaum from addressing the reporting that ESPN had pulled their longtime college football analyst from other shows.
In a popular segment where Paul Finebaum takes calls from fans (one of the best parts of his show, in my humble opinion), a caller by the name of “Judge John” tried to ask the show host about the reporting and speculation surrounding Finebaum’s unexplained absences from other ESPN shows. Call it ironic, bad timing or purposeful… but the call dropped right in the middle of Judge John’s sentence. Finebaum did not address the question or the call dropping, and kept the show moving right along, as you can see below:
Coincidence? Hard to believe that a call of that nature would just conveniently drop out like that, and you can see it on Paul’s face (and hear it in his chuckle) that he knew exactly what was going on. It seems like ESPN wants to just sweep all of this under the rug, if something is indeed happening.
And if ESPN is up to something, it’s up to Paul Finebaum to let fans know if he’s truly been silenced since making his political beliefs and potential political moves public.
