Paul Finebaum responds to Nick Saban calling 2021 season a 'rebuilding year' for Alabama

Nick Saban calling Alabama‘s 2021 season — a season where Crimson Tide quarterback Bryce Young captured the Heisman Trophy and Saban’s team came close to being national champions — a “rebuilding year” has Paul Finebaum heated.

Simply, Finebaum is fed up with Saban feeding the college football world a bevy of excuses for not capturing a title last season, which he explained passionately on ESPN’s Get Up on Thursday morning.

“This is very predictable if you follow Nick Saban closely. Whenever he loses a game, like a national championship game, here comes the excuse. Here comes the ‘Nick Saban Grievance Tour.’ I mean, sometimes I don’t know if whether Nick Saban is trying to continue to be the greatest head coach of all time, or he wants Jimmy Kimmel’s job. I don’t really understand it,” explained Finebaum. “Quite frankly, at some point it’s not a great look. I know that’s not a popular thing to say where I live, because Nick Saban can do no wrong. But first it was NIL that he was complaining about over and over, and now he’s quibbling about what happened last year.

“By the way, in the past — you can go back into the record book — every time he loses one of these games, he called the Sugar Bowl a couple of years ago a consolation game. He blamed the NFL Draft on the loss to Ohio State when Ezekiel Elliott was there. There’s always something with Nick Saban, but we still love him, don’t we?”

Evidently, Paul Finebaum doesn’t want to hear any more excuses from Nick Saban as to why Alabama wasn’t the kings of the college football world last season. NIL, transfer portal, “rebuilding year” and everything in between be damned — Saban is the greatest coach of all time in the minds of many, and Finebaum wants him to act like it.

Paul Finebaum names his SEC favorite behind Georgia, Alabama in 2022

Although the SEC is as competitive a football conference in the NCAA, the conversation only surrounds Alabama and Georgia entering the 2022 season. The duo squared off both in the SEC championship game and College Football Playoff national championship last year. The rest of the league is as good as it’s ever been yet the Crimson Tide and Bulldogs dominate the headlines. Beyond Nick Saban and Kirby Smart, who is the next likely contender in the SEC? ESPN’s Paul Finebaum recently gave his pick.

Paul Finebaum selected Kentucky as his most likely SEC champion besides Alabama and Georgia during an episode of ‘McElroy & Cubelic In The Morning’. He justified it by saying the Wildcats pose the least amount of questions and have a relatively straightforward path to get there.

“The question remains very difficult but I’d probably go with Kentucky only because I know what they have,” said Finebaum. “All it’s going to take for Kentucky is to hold serve on games that they have to win then maybe pull that one upset. Have a type of season where Will Levis just rises up and ends up being one of the top couple of quarterbacks in the country and ultimately upset Georgia.”

Mark Stoops has done the heavy lifting by leading Kentucky from a laughing stock to the conference’s model of consistency. The Wildcats went 2-10 the year before he arrived and 2-10 in his first season in Lexington. Since then, the Wildcats have improved each season. They’ve now made six straight bowl appearances and won four straight in the postseason. The Wildcats finished second in the SEC East in 2021 only to Georgia.