{"id":737300,"date":"2026-07-01T17:24:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-01T17:24:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/737300\/"},"modified":"2026-07-01T17:24:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-01T17:24:09","slug":"paul-finebaum-would-have-sold-my-soul-running-for-senate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/737300\/","title":{"rendered":"Paul Finebaum: ‘Would have sold my soul’ running for Senate"},"content":{"rendered":"

Paul Finebaum has spent nearly 50 years building a career he never planned for, and on Wednesday, hours before receiving the Sports Media Lifetime Achievement Award at the Barrett Media Audio Summit, he detailed why he came close to leaving it all behind<\/a> for a U.S. Senate campaign.<\/p>\n

The opportunity arrived last August, when Tommy Tuberville<\/a> decided to leave his Alabama Senate seat to run for governor. Finebaum wasn\u2019t looking for a way into politics. He\u2019d built four decades of radio and television work around college football, and specifically around being the \u201cMouth of the South.\u201d But according to Finebaum, the people encouraging him to run weren\u2019t vague about his chances.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was a tug of war. I\u2019ve lived a long time, but it was the biggest challenge I\u2019ve ever had professionally. I didn\u2019t go looking for it; it came to me,\u201d Finebaum said. \u201cThey told me they thought I could win. Then they told me not only do they think I could win, they know I could win. It\u2019s tempting when someone tells you they have the money and the support to put behind you to be a United States Senator. It\u2019s very tempting.\u201d<\/p>\n

Finebaum first raised the idea of a run<\/a> in a September interview with Clay Travis, citing the assassination of Charlie Kirk as the moment that pushed him toward considering it. Within a week, Travis was reporting<\/a> that ESPN had pulled Finebaum from his usual rotation of appearances in response, a claim the network\u2019s Bill Hofheimer called \u201cTOTALLY FALSE<\/a>.\u201d Finebaum\u2019s SportsCenter and Get Up hits thinned out that week regardless. He spent the rest of the college football season<\/a> publicly quiet on where he stood<\/a> before announcing in December<\/a> that he would not run.<\/p>\n

\u201cUltimately, the reason I couldn\u2019t do it is because that\u2019s not me,\u201d he said. \u201cI can\u2019t get up there and mimic a talking point that I don\u2019t believe, and I believe to be patently false. That\u2019s exactly what you have to do. I spent enough time around the political advisors telling me what I have to say. What I can\u2019t say and how many times I have to say this and that. Win or lose, and I do believe we would have won. I would have sold my soul and given up something I worked hard to ascertain for what.\u201d<\/p>\n

He gave a related account of the same decision<\/a> to CBS News\u2019 Major Garrett<\/a> back in December, telling Garrett that operatives had advised him the clearest path to winning the Republican primary was to run against \u201cwoke Disney,\u201d ESPN\u2019s parent company, and that he couldn\u2019t do that to the network that had employed him for 13 years.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was a time in this country when it really would have been enjoyable. You could be collegial and work with others across the aisle. But today, the stuff that is said every single day is insane. That\u2019s not right or left, it\u2019s both,\u201d Finebaum said. \u201cAfter you go through this, you realize how bad it is. I still feel I could add something to society, but it won\u2019t be as an elected official.\u201d<\/p>\n

Finebaum is 70 years old and remains the longest-tenured face of SEC Nation, a program he\u2019s carried since ESPN launched the SEC Network in 2014.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Paul Finebaum has spent nearly 50 years building a career he never planned for, and on Wednesday, hours…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":737301,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[57091,399,398,396,397,8021,43587,99,3078,3079],"class_list":["post-737300","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaa-football","tag-barrett-media","tag-football","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-football","tag-ncaafootball","tag-paul-finebaum","tag-sec-network","tag-sports","tag-tommy-tuberville","tag-u-s-senate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737300","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=737300"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737300\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/737301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=737300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=737300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=737300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}