Paul Finebaum shares his biggest college football stories in recent months

The final month of college football left fans with no shortage of wild headlines and jaw-dropping developments. However, there was one particular event that Paul Finebaum believes stole the show.

“Specifically, it’s the end of [Nick] Saban,” McElroy said. “We have so rarely, if ever, maybe once in modern time, had a moment like this and it had so many reverberations with the players leaving [Alabama] and then the players leaving Washington, and then all the other domino effect. That was a jolt.”

On Jan. 10, long-time Alabama head coach Nick Saban announced his retirement. The decision was a nuclear bomb, radiating through the landscape of college football.

After taking over the reins at Alabama in 2007, Saban led the Crimson Tide to six national championships, including three titles in the College Football Playoff era. He nearly added another trophy to his collection this past season, falling to Michigan in overtime in the CFP semifinal.

Saban won 201 games at Alabama — tied with Vince Dooley (Georgia) for the second-most wins at a single school in SEC history. Saban only trails Bear Bryant, who won 232 games in his 25 seasons with the Crimson Tide. The fallout from Saban’s decision was extensive.

Alabama was forced to find a new head coach for the first time in 17 seasons. On Jan. 12, the program hired former Washington head coach Kalen DeBoer to replace Saban. Both programs witnessed mass exoduses in the transfer portal.

As of this report, Washington has lost 17 players to the portal this offseason. Meanwhile, Alabama has lost 20. Both rosters will look wildly different in spring training than they did only a few months prior. Saban’s decision isn’t the only recent event that stood out in Finebaum’s mind.

Paul Finebaum looks at the long game

“Long term, the court case is maybe more important, the one in Tennessee recently that may have essentially killed off the the NCAA,” Finebaum said.

On Feb. 23, Judge Clifton L. Corker granted a preliminary injunction against the NCAA in the NIL lawsuit filed by the attorneys general of Tennessee and Virginia. The ruling allowed booster-funded NIL collectives to communicate with high school recruits and transfer portal players.

Further, the court ordered that the NCAA and “all persons in active concert or participation with the NCAA” are restrained from enforcing the interim NIL policy, NCAA bylaws or any other authority that prohibits athletes from negotiating NIL compensation.

With the NCAA’s most widely-known coach gone and NIL rules rapidly developing, the future of college football is unknown. However, whatever comes next will undoubtedly have been influenced by the events Finebaum broke down.