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Have we seen the last of the famed SEC talking head, Paul Finebaum, on ESPN airwaves for the foreseeable future? If Finebaum is a man of his word, it appears that will be the case.
With Ole Miss’s loss to Miami in the Fiesta Bowl on Thursday night, we are assured to have a college football national champion for the third consecutive year. In fact, the loss capped a horrific postseason for the SEC on the whole.
Back in August, Finebaum made a promise that if the SEC did not win the national championship this time around, it would be the last we’d see of him.
Paul Finebaum says he will leave the country if an SEC team doesn’t win the National Championship. pic.twitter.com/MgRioxgGPu
— The Scarlet and Gray Podcast (@TheSG_Podcast) August 10, 2025
“It is,” Finebaum said when asked if it would be an SEC team lifting the national championship come January. “And if it’s not, I’m leaving the country. Because I am so sick and tired of being harassed by Big Ten fans on our show.
“The Big Ten has literally done nothing. They’ve won two national championships. Michigan won one two years ago … they’ve won one-and-a-half national championships, I think, before that in 70 years, and they act like they invented football.”
Of course, Finebaum’s math is off by a good bit. Ohio State and Michigan both won national championships as members of the Big 10, and while programs like Penn State and Nebraska weren’t members of the Big Ten at the time, both have storied histories dating back several decades.
Also, Rutgers, a member of the current Big 10, is literally the birthplace of college football. So it’s pretty fair for the Big 10 to make that claim.
Sadly, if Paul is a man of honor, which is a big “if,” then he must head out of the country. Because yet again, the SEC did not deliver him a national championship.