Newly-hired LSU head football coach Lane Kiffin on Thursday had some fun at the expense of ESPN's Paul Finebaum by referencing the commentator's rumored move to politics. Days earlier, Kiffin announced that he'd stepped down as the head coach of Ole Miss and taken the job at rival LSU. The move sent shockwaves across the sports landscape and even reached the world of politics, with many criticizing Kiffin's sudden departure from a team with national championship aspirations.
Finebaum made his bones as a newspaper reporter in Birmingham, Alabama, in the 1980s, and moved up the media ladder from there. He was a popular Southern sports talk radio host by the '90s, operated his own syndicated network in the 2000s, and by 2013 had become an inescapable presence on ESPN. The Paul Finebaum Show has made him the de facto voice of the Southeastern Conference, so omnipresent that even a handful of his recurring callers are minor internet celebrities.
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
SEC Network host Paul Finebaum said Monday that he would consider leaving ESPN to run for the U.S. Senate representing Alabama. The 70-year-old Finebaum said during a recent interview with Outkick that he'd run as a Republican to fill the seat vacated by former Auburn football coach Tommy Tuberville, who has said he'll run for Alabama governor in the 2026 elections. Tuberville's current Senate term ends in 2027.
