Paul Finebaum Names National Championship Contender That Was 'Hard to Take Seriously'

SEC Network’s Paul Finebaum is known for his brash opinions and doesn't hold back when he feels strongly about a topic, especially when it comes to non-SEC teams.

Finebaum was notably very critical of the Indiana Hoosiers up until they won the national championship this past season. He felt their success in 2024, making the College Football Playoff, was a fluke and that they would come back down to earth in 2025.

Even with the success early in 2025, he wanted to see them beat one of the top teams, something they struggled to do the previous year. Then Indiana kept winning, defeating teams like the Oregon Ducks and Ohio State Buckeyes on the way to clinching the No. 1 seed in the College Football Playoff.

Indiana's Fernando Mendoza (15) looks downfield during the College Football Playoff National Championship. — Indiana's Fernando Mendoza (15) looks downfield during the College Football Playoff National Championship college football game. | Rich Janzaruk/Herald-Times / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

The Hoosiers then went on to win the national championship, and by that time, Finebaum had started to come around to Indiana's dominance. However, he revealed on "The Paul Finebaum Show" that the Hoosiers were hard to take seriously last season, which is why their win was a little bit more irritating.

"This year, was it a little bit more irritating?" Finebaum said. "Yeah, because it was Indiana. They were just so hard to take seriously."

That reaction says more about Finebaum’s perspective than it does about Indiana’s accomplishment. Finebaum's major issue stems from not fully embracing this new era of college football. On top of that, he has historically been slow to embrace non-traditional powers.

He's been covering the game for decades, and in his lifetime, there have typically been consistent contenders like Alabama, Oklahoma, Notre Dame, Ohio State, Michigan, Georgia, USC and others.

However, when a team like Indiana, which has historically been one of the worst programs in college football, rises, he has a hard time fully buying in and instead frames it as a feel-good story that is bound to collapse. But that mindset is exactly what the modern version of college football is challenging.

He also does his show on the SEC Network. His job naturally comes with a level of conference perspective because that audience makes up a large portion of his viewership. The Big Ten has started to challenge, if not surpass, the SEC, and it’s his job to take some jabs while appealing to that audience.

That context doesn’t make his opinion invalid, but it does help explain why programs like Indiana are met with skepticism instead of recognition.

The reality is, Indiana shouldn't have been irritating; it should have been exciting. The Hoosiers just proved you don't have to have the most NIL or the best recruiting classes or the top transfer portal haul to win.

They didn’t just win a championship; they challenged the blueprint that many believed was required to win in this era. So many people have issues with what the sport has become, but Indiana showed that with good coaching and strong player evaluation, you can still win at the highest level.

That’s the kind of story college football needs more of, and one that should be embraced, not dismissed.