​Paul Finebaum has spent three years every Monday during the college football season engaged in conversations with Brian Kelly, and as he recently noted, he would frankly choose not to relive that cadence. During Barrett Media’s Audio Summit earlier this month, Finebaum was asked how he reconciles his practice of critiquing coaches with giving them a weekly platform on his show. His answer began with a nod to his ESPN colleague Nick Saban, whose weekly appearances on The Pat McAfee Show helped catalyze a similar arrangement with LSU for Brian Kelly. Finebaum admitted that he said yes to the arrangement without fully grasping the toll it would take, because it translated to a continuous 20-minute live spot with Kelly every Monday for three straight years. The experience, he quipped, was excruciating: “I think I would rather have a colonoscopy on the stage right now without anesthesia,” he said, underscoring how painful the routine had become.
In assessing who he holds up as a benchmark, Finebaum points to Lane Kiffin. His history with Kiffin stretches back to 2013, when Finebaum launched a blistering on-air critique of Kiffin on College GameDay after a loss to Arizona State, even likening him to Miley Cyrus and labeling him “very little talent.” The fallout was significant: Kiffin was fired from USC days later, and the two carried a years-long grudge, a feud that a 2024 Athletic profile notes they only resolved recently. Against that backdrop, Finebaum now cites Kiffin’s interviews as his favorites on the show—not because Kiffin provides strong answers, but because of what happens before those answers emerge. He describes the dynamic as entertaining because it feels like a setup between family members—an older sister arranging a meeting with a younger sibling of a friend—where you sit unprepared, and eventually, Kiffin says something that reveals the moment.
Finebaum argues that the broader point is that football coaches no longer rely on reporters in the same way they once did. They can address their fan base directly and sometimes skip traditional interviews altogether, a shift that Finebaum says does not bother him. What does affect him is the “live, in-season” approach, because that environment alters the nature of the conversation. He sees real value in the spring interviews, when coaches have less to protect and are more candid, rather than during the pressure-filled grind of the season. As he put it, you wouldn’t want to talk to a head coach—whether it’s the Giants or any other team—mid-season, because, in his estimation, those conversations are often worthless.
Yet even as Finebaum downplays the value of mid-season scoops, he acknowledges the personal calculus involved in his own weekly format. He has already signaled which option he would choose, even if it means enduring another 20 minutes with Kelly or opting for a grotesque alternative with a colonoscopy performed without anesthesia. The bottom line, for Finebaum, remains that the cycle of weekly interviews with Brian Kelly has worn on him, and he would prefer not to repeat it, even as he recognizes the formula that made such segments possible in the first place. This candid reflection, shared at the summit and reported by Awful Announcing, captures a broader tension in modern sports media: the push-pull between hostile, hard-edged critique and the demands of giving coaches a platform, especially when that platform becomes a ritual rather than a rarity.