Paul Finebaum isn\u2019t going to run for the U.S. Senate, but he got a good taste of what it would be like if he had.<\/p>\n
In September, the ESPN SEC analyst threw his hat into the political ring seemingly out of nowhere, telling conservative radio host Clay Travis that he was considering a run for the US Senate<\/a> because he was moved after the assassination of podcast host Charlie Kirk. However, just as quickly as it seemed like Finebaum was moving into politics, he opted out<\/a>.<\/p>\n Last week, he told CBS News that he ultimately decided against running because of what he was told by political consultants and insiders<\/a> over how he\u2019d have to run his campaign.<\/p>\n \u201cUltimately, the reason I couldn\u2019t do it was the political operatives. I know this sounds like I\u2019m blaming something on other people, but I\u2019m not. I\u2019m just telling you the reality that you already know. They told me the clearest and cleanest path to victory, I was running as a Republican in Alabama, was to run, and I\u2019m just going to paraphrase the political operatives\u2019 words, \u2018you need to run against woke Disney,\u2019 and I could not do it. I could not burn down the place I had worked for the last 13 years that had given me an opportunity as a Birmingham talk show host and use whatever you may think of Disney, and plenty of people have opinions, Disney owns ESPN for those of you who don\u2019t know, I couldn\u2019t do it,\u201d Finebaum said. \u201cI had several prominent people including two senators, sitting senators, tell me that\u2019s your path. There were many other paths obviously to win a primary in Alabama, but they thought that was the cleanest path.\u201d<\/p>\n Finebaum expanded on what he\u2019d been told behind the scenes in an interview with AL.com\u2019s Kyle Whitmire<\/a>, sharing the specific things he\u2019d been told he would have to answer for.<\/p>\n \u201cI really don\u2019t know how you do it, but somebody had gone through years of radio and it came down to just a handful of comments that I\u2019ve made, which is pretty amazing,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n He had once called President Donald Trump infantile<\/a>. He had complimented Nick Saban for promoting masking and social distancing<\/a> during the pandemic. And the one thing that would bite him soonest \u2014 he lauded the Alabama coach for marching with his team in a Black Lives Matter demonstration after the death of George Floyd.<\/p>\n He stands by the BLM comment, by the way.<\/p>\n \u201cI complimented him because I thought as a football coach, it was the right thing to do,\u201d Finebaum says. \u201cEd Orgeron had not done it and it had caused a lot of consternation and ended up really probably costing him his job because he lost the locker room at LSU.\u201d<\/p>\n The current Vice President of the United States once referred to Donald Trump as \u201cAmerica\u2019s Hitler<\/a>,\u201d so we\u2019re not sure his \u201cinfantile\u201d comment would be too worrisome. However, they were correct on the BLM front as conservative activist Laura Loomer did go after Finebaum over it<\/a>.<\/p>\n Finebaum added that he didn\u2019t personally think his being Jewish would be an issue, \u201calthough it came up frequently, among his consultants and others he spoke with.\u201d<\/p>\n The whole experience appeared to offer the SEC talking head a sobering reality check about the political world as well.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ll never forget this as long as I live. They said, \u2018Once we get to this number, you will become a United States Senator,’\u201d he recalls. \u201cIt\u2019s that simple. It was all about money.\u201d<\/p>\n All of a sudden, the sports media world doesn\u2019t seem so seedy after all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Paul Finebaum isn\u2019t going to run for the U.S. Senate, but he got a good taste of what…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":356242,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[399,398,396,397,8021,99],"class_list":["post-356241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaa-football","tag-football","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-football","tag-ncaafootball","tag-paul-finebaum","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356241","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=356241"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356241\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/356242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=356241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=356241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=356241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}