PAWWWLLL, still in

Man, Finebaum continues to hammer the Georgia love.

“… I think Georgia is primed. I think this is the best Georgia team that Kirby Smart has had. He had a really good one his second year. Let’s say they get past Clemson — and I would predict that they’re going to. They have a couple of other games that matter. They have Florida, of course, and then they have the likely Alabama game. I think they can get to the playoff, even by losing to Clemson. But of course, that’s not going to happen.”

Why do I feel like I’m being set up?

Which team poses the biggest threat to Alabama?

PAWWWLLL!!! is all in on the Dawgs.  Whether that’s from being an SEC homer, or setting up Kirby as Saban’s recurring foil, or for some other reason, I couldn’t say.

PAWWWLLL, that’s rat poison!

Aw, geez.

Paul Finebaum says Georgia should be on the shortlist of Playoff frontrunners given what the Bulldogs having coming back from an elite team. Finebaum was asked this week to choose between Kirby Smart, Texas A&M’s Jimbo Fisher or Oklahoma’s Lincoln Riley and who would be the first to win a national championship at their respective program.

“I think it’s Kirby Smart. I think of those three, he’s got the best chance this year,” Finebaum said Monday on WJOX-FM. “By the way, not by much over Lincoln Riley. I think this is an Oklahoma team that finally is capable. But I see the same fate for Oklahoma as always. Kirby Smart, to me, has a really-good chance. If you look at this. If you take out ‘oh well the two meltdowns against Alabama.’ If you excise that out of the conversation and simply look at what Georgia has on its roster and the schedule, Georgia should easily be considered among the two or three favorites to win the national championship this year, especially when you look at that first game.

“Right now, it’s easy to predict games six or seven weeks out, but if I had to predict a game today, I’d pick Georgia to beat Clemson. If that happens, we all know what’s going to be happening the next Monday. Georgia will be the talk of the country.”

I find it hard to believe Dan Mullen wasn’t part of that conversation.

Normaltown

So, here’s something.

A caller just suggested that "a normal fan" should be added to the playoff committee. Think that is a good idea? Who would you nominate?

— Paul Finebaum (@finebaum) June 15, 2021

As someone who thinks “normal fan” is an oxymoron, I’m not sure how thrilled I’d be about a poster on, say, Stingtalk, getting a spot on the selection committee.  I think I’d settle for a qualification that anyone who expresses an opinion on social media is immediately disqualified.  (I keed, I keed… I think.)

And you?

“… because they teach you this in journalism…”

Finebaum pretends to be bamboozled.

"They should run away from everybody on their schedule after Clemson." –@bmarcello forecasts a season of blowouts for the Dawgs. pic.twitter.com/PPvwzy2Bqk

— Paul Finebaum (@finebaum) June 2, 2021

Yeah, I mean, beat every team in the East by double digits?  Why, you’d have to go all the way back to the 2018 season to find a Georgia squad that accomplished that.  And then you’d have to go back an entire season before that!

In fact, given that Florida managed to do it just last year, it’s not exactly an unheard of event.  But I suspect Finebaum knows that.

Finebaum wants some of that sweet narrative action.

It’s why they pay him the big bucks.

“It’s always the same issues for Georgia though,” Finebaum added. “They deal with the toughest opening game in the country, I said at Clemson but although the game is two hours from Clemson, it still feels like it’s at Clemson. And then, the vagaries of the SEC, I think they are way ahead of Florida right now.

“But they still have to go to Auburn, we don’t know about (how good Auburn will be this season), do we? And the SEC Championship Game, likely against Alabama. So, I don’t think much has really changed at Georgia. If they can hold it together, last year, the team didn’t hold it together. They lost the Alabama game and they look terrible against Florida. I think it’s fairly similar, I mean this is what Kirby Smart does. He recruits elite athletes. This is one of the top four or five programs in the country, can they win the right games for us to say they’re going to the playoffs? Simple as that.”

Thanks for that keen insight, PAWWWLLL.  I had no idea that was happening — and right under our noses, too.

(By the way, “they still have to go to Auburn”?  Really?  Need to up your trolling game, man.)

PAWWWLLL!!!, a master at work

There’s amateur trolling, and then there’s Finebaum, a pro’s pro.

“I don’t want to say anything blasphemous a week and a day after Easter Sunday, but Alabama-Auburn is no longer really the driving rivalry, I think, in the Southeastern Conference,” Finebaum said on the show. “Because everyone understands the reality of it. Nick Saban is going to win, maybe 92.3% of the games or whatever.”

If that’s your rivalry barometer, then Georgia-Florida stopped being a rivalry around 2000.  But I digress.

Finebaum added that his show provides him a good barometer of how heated a rivalry can currently be based on his callers’ reactions.

“I don’t want to speak for you because you live there and I don’t anymore but, on my program, which you know, is a more of an SEC-centric show — if I want to just drop some blood into the water and see sharks circling, it’s about Georgia or Florida. And it’s vicious,” Finebaum added.

“They love nothing more than to remind Georgia fans they haven’t won a national championship in 40 years. It doesn’t matter what Kirby Smart has done, so yeah, I think this is a continuum of the SEC’s current-day great rivalry. And it is vicious.”

If reminding Georgia fans they haven’t won a national championship in 40 years is his definition of a heated rivalry, then we’ve got a heated rivalry with just about every fan base in the SEC, plus Georgia Tech, because that tired line is trotted out by plenty of folks other than Gators on a daily basis.

But that’s not whom Finebaum is really targeting with that, anyway.

The ESPN host went a step further and got in a dig at Auburn’s place in the Iron Bowl rivalry and its former coach.

“Even the most ardent Auburn fan has almost just waved the white flag when it comes to (Nick) Saban now,” he concluded. “Yeah, you know (Gus) Malzahn won three times, which is extraordinary, still got him fired, didn’t he?”

Glad we could be of service, Paul.  By the way, if you’re looking for intense SEC rivalries, you might want to check out Ole Miss – Mississippi State.  Talk about vicious…

PAWWWLLL sez…

Okay, here’s a fun little mental exercise for you.

As is always the case, the expectations in Athens and Baton Rouge will be very high in 2021.

There are plenty of reasons to like both teams to be legitimate contenders not just for their respective SEC divisions but the College Football Playoff but having preseason hype and living up to those massive expectations are two different things.

Taking that into consideration, which coach needs a big season more in 2021, Kirby Smart or Ed Orgeron?

That was a question asked of ESPN host Paul Finebaum on Monday during his latest appearance on Birmingham-based WJOX 94.5 FM radio show The Roundtable.

Without looking at the linked piece, predict the answer and Finebaum’s rationale for it.

PAWWWLLL!!! is today’s guest Daily Gator.

Come for the Finebaum is high header, but stay for the “put his reputation on the line” bravado.

We should only be so fortunate.

Get me somebody from casting.

Yeah, I’m surprised nobody has had the sense to kill this in the cradle yet.

‘What’s next for Paul Finebaum?’ is becoming a frequent topic of conversation, but one thing that appears to be gaining traction for ESPN’s star college football analyst is a sitcom based on his life.

Michael Smith of the Sports Business Journal first reported a potential sitcom for Finebaum back in February. According to SBJ, Finebaum and his agency CAA broached all four major networks about the possibility of creating a sitcom featuring his radio show as the focal point.

In a recent interview with Scott Fowler of The Charlotte Observer, Finebaum said the prospect of a sitcom is getting very serious. Although he didn’t mention the network or actor, Finebaum described the project as being in motion.

“There is a major Hollywood production company involved and already several writers are working on the script to be pitched to the major networks soon,” Finebaum told Fowler.

“The biggest news is a well-known actor is extremely interested in playing the lead. We did a call recently and it was fairly bizarre having a successful Hollywood actor asking me about me. He is considerably younger, so the idea is to set the sitcom at an early point in my career.”

Since they haven’t, let’s have some fun.  Whom would you cast as Finebaum, early or late in his career?  Don’t feel that you have to limit yourself to humans.