Paul Finebaum branded 'one of the all-time cowards' by Todd McShay

What happened between Paul Finebaum and Todd McShay? Clearly something the Mouth of the South said or did has bothered the long-time football analyst.

Todd McShay has clearly taken an issue with Paul Finebaum. | Ken Ruinard / staff via Imagn Content Services, LLC

Football analyst Todd McShay is coming after Paul Finebaum for his criticism of Alabama head coach Kalen DeBoer, and it sounds very personal.

Alabama pulled out a statement victory at Georgia over the weekend to avoid falling to 2-2, relieving some of that massive pressure off the coach, and arousing some high praise from McShay, who also couldn’t hold back his contempt for Finebaum.

“It’s really good to see this for DeBoer, because it feels like if Alabama had lost this game after losing to Florida State, and Florida State just lost to Virginia... That place is vicious. Watch that trash, Paul Finebaum, to see how vicious... It’s just not good,” McShay said on his podcast for The Ringer.

“It’s just not good. Humanity. Get my little shot in at Paul, one of the all-time cowards. Next week, I can let it all unleash. We’ll explain why later,” he added.

A little intrigue from McShay, who clearly has some issue with Finebaum.

Both were colleagues at ESPN until McShay departed the network in 2023, and even appeared on Finebaum’s show a couple of times, and there never seemed to be any obvious bad blood between the two at the time.

But there’s clearly some very strong negative feeling coming from McShay’s end, and from what it sounds like, there’s more to come.

Finebaum made headlines this week when he revealed that he was considering leaving ESPN himself in order to potentially make a run at the U.S. Senate in Alabama.

But the comments from McShay were livestreamed on Saturday night, before Finebaum made that revelation, so whatever there is between the two doesn’t seem to be political as much as on something Finebaum must have said about the Alabama coach.

And there has been plenty on that front.

Finebaum was foremost among those analysts who were sharply critical of Kalen DeBoer as he came into his second season at Alabama, and that criticism only grew louder after his team lost the first game of the season.

Finebaum called DeBoer’s team soft and said the coach was clueless, likening his situation at Alabama to a house of cards waiting to fall down at any moment.

He predicted the Tide coach probably wouldn’t survive if things didn’t turn around very quickly, and joked that it seemed like DeBoer wasn’t even at SEC Media Days this year given all the attention was on Nick Saban.

Naturally, much of Finebaum’s commentary around Alabama and DeBoer changed after Saturday’s big upset win at Georgia, but that doesn’t mean McShay has forgotten about what was said before.

And while McShay hasn’t been shy about criticizing some of his former colleagues, going as far as calling one of the network’s most recognizable faces a coward is something else entirely.

As to why, we’ll have to wait until McShay tells us.

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