ESPN star in the hot seat as Senate campaign rumors swirl: ‘Trump-hating RINO’
Legendary college football broadcaster Paul Finebaum is taking heat for allegedly being a “Trump-hating” weak Republican amid widespread rumors that he is planning a run for the U.S. Senate in Alabama.
The 70-year-old ESPN host, best known as the foremost authority on SEC football, has not yet announced an official run. However, he has revealed he is intrigued by the idea of such a run and admitted in an interview with OutKick to “thinking about it constantly.”
For some Republican insiders in Alabama, this has been sufficient to start raising alarms about why they believe Finebaum would be a poor choice for a Senate candidate.
Dale Jackson, a prominent Alabama radio politics talk show host, told Fox News Digital that though “Finebaum is a radio legend and a fixture in the South … nobody knows what he believes.”
“The guy is a legend,” Jackson continued. “[But] I’ve been doing radio and talk radio for almost 20 years in Alabama, and I couldn’t tell you what Paul Finebaum knows or believes about anything political.”
“The minute he starts talking about what he believes. It’s going to be picked apart, and I don’t know if he’s necessarily ready for what that means,” said Jackson.
Finebaum’s record on political stances is mixed. In 2016, he stated, “this country is not oppressing Black people,” but then later apologized on ESPN, saying his “eyes are wider open,” according to RealClearPolitics.
In 2017, he remarked that President Donald Trump “does behave like a child,” per FanBuzz.
In 2020, Finebaum went on the record praising a video in which Nick Saban encouraged COVID-19 social distancing and masking, according to 247Sports. He also spoke favorably of Saban’s decision to lead an athletes’ social justice march in which many players wore Black Lives Matter shirts, according to local outlet Bham Now.
Finebaum told the outlet that “Nick Saban leading that march was one of his finer moments”
“The video was very powerful. There was a lot of blowback. I had Alabama fans call in and say they’ll never support the team again. We all hear the same arguments about Black Lives Matter,” Finebaum went on. “I say that because he did it without making a political statement. He didn’t overdo it, he did it quietly. He was supporting his players, and to me that’s the most important thing. It’s what a coach is supposed to do, and I think that, to me, speaks very well of him. In a state like Alabama, it’s not the same as if he was doing it in Michigan, but he didn’t let it affect him.”
Yet, Finebaum told OutKick that he voted for Trump in 2024 and that it was Charlie Kirk’s murder that is motivating him to seriously consider running for the Senate.
“It’s hard to describe, not being involved in politics, how that affected me and affected tens of millions of people all over this country. And it was an awakening,” Finebaum said of Kirk’s assassination.
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Finebaum also said in the interview that if Trump told him, “Paul, you’re my guy,” he would find it “impossible to tell him no.”
“There’s no way I could. I would tell him yes,” he said.
If he enters the race, Finebaum would be running to replace another football star, Sen. Tommy Tuberville, best known for leading Auburn University in an undefeated season crowned by an SEC championship in 2004. Tuberville, who has been an outspoken conservative voice in the Senate since his election in 2021, is seeking the Alabama governorship in 2026.
Others already declared in the Alabama Senate race include state Attorney General Steve Marshall and Alabama Republican Rep. Barry Moore.
Jackson said that while Tuberville had a prior record of political stances, he sees Finebaum as an “unknown entity.”
“Finebaum is basically just like I’m famous. I’m a big-time radio guy, people like me. Why can’t I be senator? And it’s just kind of an odd thing,” said Jackson.
When contacted for comment, Finebaum told Fox News Digital, “I will circle back when I have something substantive to say.”
For his part, Tuberville has spoken highly of Finebaum.
“Paul is smart. He loves the country,” Tuberville said on the “War Room” podcast. “Again, been a friend of mine for a long time. I have not talked with him about it. I did an interview with him, 30 minutes, about two months ago, face to face. It went well.”
“I tell you, he’s got 100% name ID in Alabama. He’d have a lot of big people behind him. He would be a force in the race if he decided to get into it. … Paul is a good guy, a good friend.”
Some voices, meanwhile, have been much more critical of the possibility of a Finebaum campaign. A national Republican strategist who works on U.S. Senate races told Fox News Digital, “You can’t hate President Trump and Republican voters and win a Republican primary.”
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“Paul Finebaum trashed President Trump, promoted tyrannical masking during COVID and proclaimed his support for Black Lives Matter,” said the strategist, adding, “Finebaum’s experience as a sports analyst doesn’t translate into analyzing his own political prospects apparently. This Trump-hating RINO [Republican-in-name-only] has virtually zero chance of winning an Alabama GOP primary.”
Former state Rep. Ed Henry, who served as then-candidate Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign co-chair for Alabama, told Fox News Digital that when he heard Finebaum was considering a Senate run, “I chuckled, because I thought, ‘Oh great, we have another person in this race who caves every time pressure is put on him.’”
“I think he’s a great guy; he’s said some good things. But when the pressure is on, he breaks, he caves, he buckles, and that’s not what we need,” Henry added.
The former representative said that what Alabama needs is “somebody who has been through fire, who has been tested, who has found to be true to their word.”
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