Paul Finebaum names ‘biggest disappointment’ in college football after Week 7

Dressed in a particularly thin hoodie type of garment, Paul Finebaum joined The Matt Barrie Show with... you guessed it... ESPN personality Matt Barrie, who asked the SEC Network star which team is his biggest disappointment in college football as we reach the midway point of the regular season.

After Barrie and Finebaum chopped it up for nearly half and hour, Barrie asked Finebaum for some mid-season superlatives, such as Finebaum's biggest letdown team from 2025. As college ball fans know well, he's got plenty of options to choose from.

"Well, I’ve already said Penn State, so let’s move them off the the roster," he commented of the Nittany Lions after their third straight loss. "I think after Penn State, Matt, it’s still Clemson, because they were top three, top four going in. Clubnik looked like a possible Heisman winner. So, there’s just no way you can get around what's happened there."

Clemson and Penn State were two preseason national championship favorites, alongside a Texas team that's also hit road bumps, but midway through October, the Tigers and Lions aren't in the AP Top 25 and possess virtually extremely longshot paths to getting into the CFP.

"There are a lot of other competitors for it," Finebaum added. "One may have turned the corner yesterday in Texas. But those two, Clemson and Penn State, were built for a championship run this year and neither one will come anywhere near it."

What's striking about the Clemson and Penn State collapses is the urgency each program entered the 2025 season with. If Ohio State or Georgia fell apart, you could say — 'Well, it's an off year!' But Penn State has been building to this season since the start of the James Franklin era, and Clemson felt like they had their best roster of the decade and were primed to compete nationally once again.

These are top coaches at elite programs with NFL Draft picks on both sides of the ball plus a pair of Heisman winners at QB. The collapses are stunning, but they're also, perhaps, the breaking point for two of college football's biggest names with their current regimes.

"The rosters were set with veterans at all the right places to make a run," Finebaum points out. "And neither of those teams will be able to do that."

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