Paul Finebaum says SEC Network stopped him from joining ‘GameDay’: ‘I wasn’t happy about the decision’

Paul Finebaum was almost a regular on ESPN’s College GameDay.

Finebaum wanted it to happen and GameDay wanted it to happen, but the SEC Network shut it down.

As a pillar of ESPN’s college football coverage, Finebaum has appeared on GameDay, but he’s never been a full-time panelist. On the latest episode of the Sports Illustrated Media Podcast, host Jimmy Traina asked Finebaum if there was ever any thought about making ESPN’s foremost college football personality a regular on their foremost college football show.

According to Finebaum, it nearly happened. Finebaum was hired by ESPN for its new SEC Network in 2013, but the SEC Network had not launched yet. While waiting for the SEC Network, GameDay producer Lee Fitting asked Finebaum if he was interested in doing ESPN’s Saturday morning college football show.

“I said, ‘Yes!’ So he tried me out one week, I ended up doing it the entire season and he wanted me to become a regular the next year,” Finebaum told Traina. “The only problem was I was the very first person hired by the SEC Network. And one of the main things I was hired for in addition to the show I do in the afternoon was for the Saturday morning SEC Nation show. I can tell you now, it became a bit of a tussle between Fitting and my bosses at the SEC Network. And they would not let me do GameDay…I can assure you I wasn’t happy about the decision.”

“There’s nothing like doing GameDay,” Finebaum explained. “I’ve never been in a rock band, but it’s the closest thing to being in one. I think Fitting tried the second year with Nick Khan alongside. But the people where I work would not let me go…by the time my contract came up for renewal, it just wasn’t worth it. GameDay had changed.”

With mutual interest between Finebaum and GameDay, and GameDay and the SEC Network both being under the ESPN umbrella, Traina questioned why a higher-up couldn’t step in to end the tussle.

“You couldn’t fight too hard because it made it look like you were not valuing where you were,” Finebaum said. “It was just not worth going to war since I agreed to the deal to be on SEC Nation and they had already promoted it, it had been marketed and it would have looked bad for the show for me to say, ‘I’m moving on.’”

But don’t expect the man known as The Mouth of the South to ever join or replace the show’s current cast of Desmond Howard, Rece Davis, Pat McAfee, Nick Saban, Lee Corso, and Kirk Herbstreit. From Finebaum’s perspective, the opportunity has since passed, claiming he no longer has any interest in trading his niche for a regular role at GameDay.

[Sports Illustrated Media Podcast]