Paul Finebaum for Senate | SEC Network talker comes out as MAGA, mulls run

The worst-kept secret in sports media is no longer – Paul Finebaum is a MAGA Republican.

I know, shocker (!).

And today we’re also learning that Finebaum is thinking about running for the U.S. Senate seat about to be vacated by former Auburn coach Tommy Tuberville.

Finebaum revealed all of this today in an interview with MAGA sports chode Clay Travis, in which Finebaum did what MAGAs have been doing of late – exploiting the shooting death of Charlie Kirk for personal gain.

Finebaum, whose value to society, such as he has any, has come from talking for the past 35 years to chain-smoking Alabama and Auburn fans, was only missing the tiny violin playing in the background as he described his reaction to Kirk’s death.

“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.

Finebaum revealed that he moved back to Alabama earlier this year after having relocated to Charlotte, where the SEC Network has its base of operations, in 2013.

Those of us outside Alabama only know about Paul Finebaum because a guy named Paul Updyke called into Finebaum’s local radio show in 2011 to brag about having poisoned iconic trees on the Auburn campus.

National outlets picked up on the story, and Finebaum and his chain-smoking friends went viral.

For insight into how serious Alabama takes its politics: Finebaum was only holding off on going public with his thoughts on putting his hat into the ring because he wanted to see what Bruce Pearl, the recently retired Auburn basketball coach, was going to do.

Scorecard on this: failed football coach Tuberville is leaving the Senate to run for governor, and fair-to-middling basketball coach Pearl is sitting this one out, leaving the door open for the 70-year-old guy with a TV show that is watched by literally only a handful more people than watch the videos of your cats that you post to Facebook.

The fact that Finebaum has 10 to 12 regular viewers on SEC Network apparently qualifies him to be a media bias critic.

“When I watch a newscast, I know how biased it is because I do this for a living. And that’s incredibly disturbing. But I keep all this to myself,” Finebaum told Travis, whose website is property of Fox, whose Fox News property paid $787.5 million to a voting-machine company for broadcasting bald-faced lies about the 2020 election.

To be fair, a lie isn’t bias.