Paul Finebaum might want to check passport expiration dates.
The SEC Network host went on the Netflix Sports Club podcast in August and made a declaration when asked if an SEC team would win the national championship. Finebaum was so confident the answer was yes that he staked his American residency on it.
“If it’s not, I’m leaving the country,” Finebaum told host Dani Klupenger when asked whether an SEC team would win the national championship. “I am so sick and tired of being harassed by Big Ten fans on our show…”
“If it’s not I’m leaving the country. I am so sick and tired of being harassed by Big Ten fans on our show. … They act like they invented football.” @finebaum has had enough of Big Ten fans, and predicts that an SEC team will win the National Championship 😂 @daniklup pic.twitter.com/LNXFwU7IL3
— Netflix Sports (@netflixsports) August 9, 2025
Miami beat Ole Miss 31-27 in the Fiesta Bowl semifinal Thursday night, eliminating the SEC’s last remaining playoff team. For the third straight season, no SEC program will play for the national championship.
About that whole “leaving the country” promise…
Finebaum won’t actually go anywhere, of course. Nobody ever does when they make these grand, dramatic exit pledges. Many celebrities vowed to flee after Donald Trump won in 2016 (and 2024) and never left. Wealthy New Yorkers threatened to abandon the city if Zohran Mamdani was elected mayor and mostly have stayed put.
And Finebaum will be staying put as the SEC’s No. 1 pom pom waver come next August, even after the conference’s playoff run ended without a single team reaching the national championship game. That’s the same conference Finebaum spent the offseason insisting the SEC would dominate, the same conference he was confident enough in to promise he’d leave the country if Big Ten fans turned out to be right.
“The Big Ten has literally done nothing,” Finebaum said on that August podcast. “They’ve won two national championships. Michigan won one two years ago. They’ve won one and a half national championships, I think, and before that, in 70 years. And they act like they invented football.”
To Finebaum’s credit, the confidence started cracking before Thursday. Earlier this week on First Take, he admitted “there’s no way to defend the SEC” after the conference went 2–7 in bowl games against non-SEC opponents.
“Ole Miss is it,” Finebaum said. “If Ole Miss loses Thursday night and I’m sitting around having to defend this league to you, Stephen A., saying ‘No big deal that it’s three years without an SEC team in the national championship game’ — there’s no defense.”
There’s also no defense if Finebaum doesn’t at least send a postcard from Cancun.
About Sam Neumann
Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.