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Paul Finebaum of ESPN was the guest on the latest episode of the SI Media with Jimmy Traina podcast. In a wide-ranging discussion that hit on a lot of major topics involving college football, the two also talked about Finebaum, his career and his current workload with ESPN.
Traina asked Finebaum about doing a four-hour daily sports talk show by himself and Finebaum said he can do it by himself the way he does a show, but not the way a lot of other people do their shows. In Finebaum’s eyes he does have other people on the show and that is the callers and guests that offer their opinions.
“..I am not like MadDog or Francesca or Cowherd or Rome where I come on and [give opinions] for 30 or 40 minutes,” he said. “I’ve never been that. I was a newspaper columnist, but…I’ve never been that crazy about my own opinion. And one thing we found early on on this show when I was in Birmingham, Alabama was people love to hear themselves talk. And while most talk show hosts abort letting anyone get in the way, we embraced it.”
Finebaum went on to talk about the callers of his show who he said all think they are the best caller on the show. He even said he has had callers say there wouldn’t be a show without their participation.
Later, Traina would ask Finebaum for his “take on the state of radio in 2024.” Finebaum replied, “I think it’s pretty bad and you know, I got to ESPN Radio in 2013, and I don’t need to tell you how many times the hosts have changed and that’s an indicator. I just think the art of radio is gone. And that’s why I really love what I do. It’s still a little different. I’m in a television studio. It’s simulcast and you do have to be concerned about that.
“I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone today. I’m on campuses every Friday and students ask me, [or say] ‘I want to do this. I want to do that.’ I wouldn’t recommend becoming a print reporter or a radio talk show host because there’s just not much runway for either one. But I’m still a fan. I grew up listening to the great broadcasters and there’s still something about that.”
Another subject that would come up was whether or not Finebaum ever wanted to be a regular on College GameDay. He told the story of his first year when he was asked to be on the show one week and ended up doing the rest of the season. However, the next year is when the SEC Network launched which was why Finebaum was initially hired and specifically they wanted him on Saturday mornings. Finebaum said there were executives at ESPN and SEC Network who disagreed on the matter but eventually it was decided to keep Finebaum off the ESPN show.
