{"id":302264,"date":"2025-11-20T01:52:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-20T01:52:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/302264\/"},"modified":"2025-11-20T01:52:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-20T01:52:07","slug":"paul-finebaum-calls-out-stephen-a-smith-over-controversial-take-on-oxford-lane-kiffin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/302264\/","title":{"rendered":"Paul Finebaum calls out Stephen A. Smith over controversial take on Oxford, Lane Kiffin"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Lane Kiffin<\/a> saga has been the talk of the sports world this week as the sixth-year Ole Miss<\/a> coach is reportedly the No. 1 target for the open head coaching jobs at both Florida<\/a> and LSU<\/a>. The debate about what Kiffin should do continued Wednesday morning on ESPN\u2018s First Take, where firebrand host Stephen A. Smith took a clear shot at Oxford, Miss., while suggesting the Rebels coach should go elsewhere.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s in Oxford, Mississippi. OK? Let\u2019s get this out of the way, now listen ladies and gentlemen \u2014 and y\u2019all can\u2019t say it \u2026 leave it to me, I\u2019ll say it \u2014 the brothers ain\u2019t trying to come to Oxford, Mississippi, for the most part,\u201d Smith said Wednesday morning<\/a>. \u201cCompared to Gainesville or Baton Rouge, Louisiana, let\u2019s just call it what it is.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those particular comments drew the ire of SEC fans several hours later during Wednesday\u2019s The Paul Finebaum Show, where the SEC Network\u2018s own firebrand Paul Finebaum \u2014 who was on the First Take segment opposite Smith and Chris \u201cMad Dog\u201d Russo \u2014 admonished Smith for injecting race into the conversation about Kiffin.<\/p>\n

\u201cAgain, I realize a lot of you did not see what Stephen A. said, but he clearly made it racial. He clearly said, in his words: \u2018the brothers do not want to go to Oxford, Mississippi,\u2019 which I think has been proven to be completely incorrect,\u201d Finebaum said during the 4 pm ET hour of The Paul Finebaum Show. \u201cI\u2019ve been to Oxford a million times and I think it\u2019s terribly unfair to bring up echoes of yesteryear, the \u201960s, and try and portray Oxford as that type of place today. It\u2019s not. The South has changed. You can make your own interpretation, but to dump on Oxford while saying Gainesville and Baton Rouge would be a utopia (comparably) is baffling to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Finebaum\u2019s comments came in response to a call from \u201cRhonda from Tennessee,\u201d who dialed in to sound off on Smith\u2019s \u201cprejudice\u201d during the his First Take segment: \u201cWhat\u2019s wrong with Oxford, Mississippi? We\u2019re SEC. We\u2019re the best,\u201d Rhonda said.<\/p>\n

Smith\u2019s comments aside, Kiffin\u2019s future \u2014 be it in Oxford, or Gainesville\/Baton Rouge should he opt to leave \u2014 remains the most talked-about story in college football as the fate of three premier SEC programs awaits his final decision. And that doesn\u2019t appear to be coming anytime soon.<\/p>\n

Making matters worse, especially for Ole Miss fans, is the fact that Kiffin and the sixth-ranked Rebels (10-1, 6-1 SEC) are in the midst of a truly historic season in Oxford. While on a bye this weekend, Ole Miss can lock up the program\u2019s first-ever College Football Playoff berth with a win in next Saturday\u2019s Egg Bowl against rival Mississippi State<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Lane Kiffin saga has been the talk of the sports world this week as the sixth-year Ole…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":302265,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[399,398,396,397,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-302264","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-ncaa","10":"tag-ncaa-football","11":"tag-ncaafootball","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=302264"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302264\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/302265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=302264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=302264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=302264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}