Paul Finebaum hopes for fair coverage of SEC by ESPN moving forward

SEC coverage as we know it has come to an end. ESPN now has the conference’s full television rights, showing every single football game on its family of networks. And if you include the additions of Texas and Oklahoma, the weekly matchups are setting up to be quite entertaining.

Now, ESPN broadcasting SEC games is nothing new. They showed all but one game every week, with CBS having the rights to the conference’s game of the week. For years, it was the only college football game CBS would broadcast until getting involved with the Big Ten this past year.

Paul Finebaum believes with ESPN completely taking over, the coverage around the SEC will be a lot more consistent. Being able to showcase every game, no matter how big or small, will help the fans out in his eyes.

“I frankly believe that means the coverage will be more consistent,” Finebaum said. “As opposed to a company doing the biggest game of the week and that’s the only thing they do. As opposed to ESPN which is swimming in college football seven days a week.”

For certain people, there is a ton of nostalgia around the SEC on CBS. Between Verne Lundquist and Brad Nessler calling games alongside Gary Danielson, playing at 3:30 ET on CBS usually meant there was a little something more at stake. There was not even a competing SEC game during the time slot for many years, meaning all fanbases were invested in whatever matchup was being shown by CBS.

However, negatives were certainly there with the CBS contract. Finebaum pointed out that fan bases did not know about kickoff times until a few days before due to CBS wanting the game of the week. ESPN will go in a different direction, having a ton of “flexibility.”

“It’s all under one roof,” Finebaum said. “By the way, it’s a very big roof but it’s still one roof and that’s the ESPN, ABC, and Disney family. It means that there is flexibility. Things can be done under one like-minded group of people as opposed to two or three. I think we’ll know further in advance when games will be so fans can plan, they won’t have to wait six days out.”

Finebaum is certainly at the front of ESPN’s coverage of the SEC. Whether it’s his own radio show on weekdays or appearing on morning talk shows, he will be the driving force of making sure the entire league gets covered.