Paul Finebaum

Paul Alan Finebaum is one of the most known American sports author, television and radio personality with many years experiences as a reporter, columnist and sports-talk radio host in the Birmingham area.

Early life

Paul was born in Memphis, Tennessee, United States, on July 26, 1955. He studied at Christian Brothers High School and at White Station High School in his hometown. In 1978, he received a degree in Political Science at the University of Tennessee and two years later he started to work by giving morning commentary on the Mark and Brian Radio Show. A few years later he decided to start his own business and he started his own afternoon radio show, who became the highest rated sport-talk in Birmingham.

Radio career

At 46 years old, along with Network Director Pat Smith and Producer Kerry Adams, they created “The Paul Finebaum Radio Network”, who was one of the top 12 sports radio shows in the United States. He created many interviews, but the most important is the four-hour interview with Randy Owen, lead singer of the country band Alabama, which Paul considered it as being the most memorable and meaningful program he has ever done.

News reporter

At 25 years old, Paul Finebaum arrived in Birmingham and he became a columnist and reporter for the Birmingham Post-Herald, a daily newspaper. Due to his passion for writing, he earned more than 250 national, regional and area sports writing awards. In addition, Paul was the first reporter who presented the firing of Auburn University, in 1998.

Television career

Paul Finebaum had numerous contributions considering the television life. He didn’t change his work field, that’s why he was a sports director for WIAT-TV from 1998 to 2002 and co-hosted individual shows on WVTM-TV. Paul also worked for ESPN, more exactly, he appeared regularly on SportsCenter, College Football Live, Olbermann or College GameDay where he a awarded a Sports Emmy, due to his contributions.

Publications

Over time, Paul wrote various books and here we can mention his popular “I hate...” series, including “I hate Michigan: 303 Reasons Why You Should, Too” and several dozen similarly titled works. In 1994 he published “The Worst of Paul Finebaum”, a compilation of some of the newspaper columns he has written and in 2001 he published “Finebaum Said”, a collection of columns and interviews. In addition, Paul Finebaum agreed to an advance with HarperCollins, one of the world’s largest publishing companies and one of the Big Five English-language publishing companies, to write a book about the radio show. The book made the New York Times best-seller list and it remained on the best-seller list for five months.

Recognition

Due to his contributions for the televisions, radios and newspapers, Finebaum became very fast one of the most known persons. He was named one of the Southeastern Conference’s Top Power Brokers by The Tennessean, the principal daily newspaper in Nashville and one of the SEC’s 10 most powerful people by The Orlando Sentinel, the primary newspaper of Orlando, Florida.

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