For Paul Finebaum, controversy has always come with the territory. His fearless takes on college football have earned him criticism, insults, and furious reactions. But throughout his decades-long career, some threats have been so serious that he has had to take extra security precautions.
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While speaking with Brandon Contes on Awful Announcing, Finebaum revealed that his early days at the Birmingham Post-Herald were far from smooth. After he moved to Alabama in 1980, his criticism of the Crimson Tide’s struggles under Ray Perkins sparked considerable backlash.
“When I got to Alabama, I didn’t know you were supposed to do anything different, and it caused a lot of problems. And there have been a couple of threats,” said Finebaum.
The incident dates back to 1984, when he launched his own sports call-in show, Fussing with Finebaum, within the same network. With Alabama suffering its first losing season in 27 years under head coach Ray Perkins, Finebaum relentlessly criticized the coach, sparing neither him nor the struggling Crimson Tide.
His fiery commentary soon crossed a line, with the university threatening to strip the station of its rights to broadcast Alabama football games. Faced with a choice between Finebaum and the Crimson Tide, the station chose football and pulled his show off the air.
More than four decades later, Paul Finebaum explained why he did it, saying he came from an environment where harsh criticism was a daily occurrence. When he arrived in Alabama, he was surprised to find that things were different.
“I was in New York in the 80s, covering an Alabama game, and it was on a Friday night. The Yankees had won like 110 games, 106, 110 games, whatever, and Warner Wolf was the local sports guy. And he said, ‘This is laughable. They went 110 games, and they got nothing. They stink.’ And I’m like, you know, that really resonated with me, and I was a big fan of Howard Cosell growing up. So that’s what I did,” Finebaum said.
This was only the beginning. Decades after the Alabama controversy, Finebaum received an actual death threat while working at WJOX. The threat concerned him enough that his radio station had a security guard follow him for about two weeks.
“There was a threat about 2008 or 2009, just as the internet was really blowing up. Somebody put my home address on MapQuest online and said, ‘You will die on Saturday night.’ Now, that concerned me a little bit,” said Finebaum.
“We turned it over to authorities, and for about two weeks, the radio station I worked for had a security guy follow me. And it got to be so ridiculous. I would, he would follow me out of the building, and I would just try to run a red light so I could get away from him.”
Little information is available about what happened to the person who posted Finebaum’s address online. But the threats and backlash never stopped Finebaum from voicing his controversial opinions or taking calls from passionate fans.
In January 2011, one caller claimed on Finebaum’s radio show that he had poisoned the iconic Toomer’s Corner oak trees on Auburn University’s campus.
Many initially dismissed it as a joke, but the shocking claim turned out to be true. In 2013, Dadeville resident Harvey Updyke Jr. pleaded guilty to poisoning the trees and was sentenced to three years, with six months to be served in jail.
Chaos has always followed Finebaum, but thankfully, he has never been physically harmed for what he says about the sport.