Paul Finebaum talked about our football team not being fully committed and about the apparatus around him not being strong enough.
Paul Finebaum about football
- Thread starter Mississippi State00
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Paul Finebaum talked about our football team not being fully committed and about the apparatus around him not being strong enough.
Gotta agree with Paul Finebaum here, even though he’s a giant douche.
Our fans care way more about the niche sports at Mississippi State, than the one sport that actually would make an economic impact on the city of Starkville and University as a whole. Football is the only reason we are currently in the SEC and the only reason we have anything that would qualify as “nice”.
You can point to the decisions made in late 2019 early 2020 by State & OM AD’s for the ever growing gap between the two schools and programs now. Unfortunately, instead of digging deep and supporting football to get us out of this hole, we will continue to ***** and complain until we are sunk forever.
We are not a serious program.
Our fans care way more about the niche sports at Mississippi State, than the one sport that actually would make an economic impact on the city of Starkville and University as a whole. Football is the only reason we are currently in the SEC and the only reason we have anything that would qualify as “nice”.
You can point to the decisions made in late 2019 early 2020 by State & OM AD’s for the ever growing gap between the two schools and programs now. Unfortunately, instead of digging deep and supporting football to get us out of this hole, we will continue to ***** and complain until we are sunk forever.
We are not a serious program.
Nah…..you can look at a decision made in december 2022 which sunk this program. That decision came on the heels of the fourth best season in school history.
I can only speak for me.
Money is the fuel that drives this sport. Period.
I personally refuse to give my money for fuel that MSU will use to gas up a Prius in a race against 911 Turbos. No matter how efficient, this race is unwinnable in the current format.
Money is the fuel that drives this sport. Period.
I personally refuse to give my money for fuel that MSU will use to gas up a Prius in a race against 911 Turbos. No matter how efficient, this race is unwinnable in the current format.
We're punting until rev share, when the talent gap will be decreased.
Soooo we have the 16th best portal class and 28th HS class but Paul doesn’t think we are committed. It’s by Athalons…. Athalons people. They have never been relevant unless you count piggly wiggle magazine sales…And then the writer doesn’t even interview Paul…. Just a snippet from one of his shows….Oh and again. All these NIL and collective list don’t work.. no one is talking about what collectives have or don’t. Y’all will believe anything
That same decision then trickled down and sunk another program too..........
It's the same in every sport, so you're basically choosing not to give State money for athletics I assume. Thus, you won't complain with results or care about coaching hires etc? That's a strange decision when the school could be stuck without a major conference if we don't support it. We'd lose all funding for athletics and the school would basically shrink to nothing without major athletics.
Hard to believe that as recently as 8 years ago, MSU and UM football programs were virtual equals and had been for 30 years. Since then, they've literally done everything right while we've done everything wrong. We are at least a decade behind, if not more.
I don't understand. The jeans page sunshine pumpers have consistently preached that there is NO WAY state will ever be left out of any future realignment.
I respect your devotion, but the football world has passed MSU by, along with many other small-mid schools.
The gap will continue to widen. To play this game, with these powerhouses, with THEIR rules, is simply agreeing to lose big and devote capital to a goal that, by the current design, is impossible to attain.
To add to my apathy, I supported MSU sports for many years, only for people like you, a laughably inept administration, and small company of naive drum-beating fundraisers tell me that realists like me are not only the problem, but also the reason MSU will be left behind. Finebaum is absolutely a spineless insufferable sniveling weasel who has made a career of ambulance chasing, but in this case, like it or not, he sees the reality of the situation.
For MSU football, sadly we are the Japanese and it’s 1944. The outcome has been determined and the battle is lost. Don’t ask me to strap another dollar into a Kamikaze mission. We should surrender, and commit to battles we can win.
Paul had been pissing on us for years. I think it was Leach that didn’t want him on campus. I don’t listen to his redneck spotlight show but I know his shtick. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again God messed up as good dick when he put ears on Finebaum
I don't know, Mr. Murray and another over there say it's the end of the MSU world. But they're ok with just getting a check because there's nothing we can do because we suck so bad. But have you toured the Grant Museum and eaten our cheese?
I choose football over all other sports at State. Up until this season all my money went to that sport. I just made a decision not to contribute. I will probably buy tickets to a road game and maybe one home game. When you go 2-10 and have one of the worst defenses in the country and make no changes to the defensive coaching staff. That bugs me. Even Mullen had enough sense to get rid of a crappy DC after one season. This defense was worse than Peter Sirmon defense. I hope Hutzler learned from last season and comes out and make me eat crow.
The actual decision to hire John Cohen as AD in 2016 is what sunk MSU Football.
We haven’t made a good football decision since Mullen left. We can nitpick Moorhead, Leach, Arnett, etc. they all were poor choices.
But the most pivotal was in 2019. We just beat OM in back-to-back Egg Bowls, but all knew Moorhead was not the right answer for our program. Instead of firing him after the game, Cohen’s bitchass panicked and it cost us everything. Of course, **** got worse, and a month later we fired him after the sh1tty bowl game.
Meanwhile, OM hires Kiffin.
The second part is, we made headway into agreeing with Sarkisian to be our HC, but of course, Cohen’s bitchass panicked again and pivoted to Leach. The rest is history and now the gap between OM and State is as large as it’s been in 60 years.
But the most pivotal was in 2019. We just beat OM in back-to-back Egg Bowls, but all knew Moorhead was not the right answer for our program. Instead of firing him after the game, Cohen’s bitchass panicked and it cost us everything. Of course, **** got worse, and a month later we fired him after the sh1tty bowl game.
Meanwhile, OM hires Kiffin.
The second part is, we made headway into agreeing with Sarkisian to be our HC, but of course, Cohen’s bitchass panicked again and pivoted to Leach. The rest is history and now the gap between OM and State is as large as it’s been in 60 years.
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You totally nailed it. I lived in Birmingham for a year and started listening to his radio talk show. This was before the SEC network. He was a total Alabama homer and basically glommed on to the University of Alabama to get listeners. He never uttered a respectful word of any sort toward MSU. The SEC network should be ashamed for hiring this Jerry Springer of the sports world.
Yea I’ll just accept you lumping in the two time national COY with jomo and arnett cuz you hated leach****
Leach was not a poor choice. His recipe would have worked here had he not died. There's too much proof of that at his previous stops to even attempt to argue otherwise. Since then though. Yikes.
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It’s not that we’re not serious about it. We’re just poor.
We haven't been serious about it since Mullen left and really, since Cohen took over. There was no investment whatsoever after the last endzone improvement a decade ago. Now, NIL and the settlement have us in a bind.
These are the same people that wanted Leach fired during the 9-4 season. They cheered arnett firing Leachs staff. Funny how nfl films has a feature film on Mike leach where he is called a brilliant innovator who changed the game by nfl GMs and head coaches. But you know the Louisville high school coach , obese34 and the rest of the low iq crowd know better.
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Ok. Let's throw out some numbers. Feel free to tell me where my numbers are wrong and/or offer your own theory.
In 2024:
- Texas reportedly spent ~$22.3M on NIL.
- Mississippi State spent ~$6.5M.
- That's a $15.8M gap in NIL investment—massive disparity in roster resources.
- All SEC schools will likely spend around $15M on football players through formal revenue sharing.
- Mississippi State jumps from $6.5M to ~$15M.
- Texas also adds $15M in revenue sharing and supplements with NIL.
Even if Texas still has a bigger total player compensation pot (say, $15M + $10M in NIL = $25M), the difference between them and Mississippi State is more like $10M, not the $15M+ we saw when NIL was the only vehicle for player payments.
Why This Might “Level the Field” (To a Degree):
- Baseline parity: Revenue sharing creates a floor that everyone reaches.
- NIL becomes additive, not the only driver of talent acquisition.
- Middle/lower-tier programs become more competitive in recruiting because they can offer a guaranteed, structured revenue-sharing payout.
- Texas, Georgia, Alabama, etc., will still outspend the bottom half via NIL, facilities, coaching salaries, etc.
- NIL won’t go away—boosters and collectives will still matter.
- Some schools might be more restricted by Title IX compliance, legal risks, or institutional willingness to spend.
- Compress the extreme gaps between the top and bottom of the SEC.
- Give mid-tier programs a fighting chance in recruiting.
- Introduce more structure and predictability to player compensation.
If that were true, we would still be on Gene’s Page.
We are the new Vandy of football. The old Vandy not the new one that beats teams like Bama. We may upset a mid SEC team once per year but that's about it folks.
The problem is that even if the gap shrinks (which it won’t), there still will be a gap. Any gap at all is bad news for MSU. We had enough struggles to begin with on the recruiting front without the portal and NIL, just due to Starkville / MS in general / lack of history / stadium and facilities, etc. We have to pay significantly above market as it is.
If what you say comes to fruition, I can see it helping the Auburns and Arkansas types, but it’s not going to do much for us at all.
It sucks that Leach passed away and I don’t think anyone would debate now with the benefit of hindsight that we would’ve been better off in 2023 and 2024 with Leach in charge than the results that actually happened. How much better? I don’t know exactly, but Mike Leach isn’t going 1-15 in SEC play with 14 of those losses by double digits.
Our problem, to me, is we had two different coaching changes (Mullen and Leach) that happened when the program was not a disaster, and we turned it into a disaster by chasing upside before we made sure our foundation was still steady.
Our problem, to me, is we had two different coaching changes (Mullen and Leach) that happened when the program was not a disaster, and we turned it into a disaster by chasing upside before we made sure our foundation was still steady.
I just don't buy this. Football games are a hot ticket when we're good.
I think fans are getting a bad rap. Our administration has made some unforced errors that has resulted in a product fans don't want to see. That's a lot different than "fans only caring about niche sports."
Our fans show up when they have a reason for hope.
Rev share is the minimum stack to sit at a table game where everyone else still has a bigger stack. It won't manage any gap in resources - only change the formalities of how the cash flow works.
This would all be so much more tolerable if our academics were flourishing .
There's always been a gap. In our best years, there was a gap between us and the top of the SEC. And we managed to win 7-10 games.
Surely, you can see the difference between winning 7-10 games and 2024. I don't think it's controversial to say that shrinking the gap will result in fielding a more competitive team. That doesn't mean there won't be a gap. But we don't have to completely eliminate the gap to be competitive.
What's up for debate is whether a different model shrinks the gap. I simply offered a theory. You're welcome to your own. But this idea that it is binary, either there is a gap or there isn't, doesn't make much sense to me.