Paul Finebaum rips Mark Emmert as a failure at leadership: 'He should be fired'
Paul Finebaum is not someone who is scared to speak his mind.
Finebaum has been vocal previously about some of the decisions made by NCAA President Mark Emmert. Especially this offseason, Finebaum has spent time pointing out the lack of leadership provided by Emmert throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
Finebaum’s latest criticism was centered at a statement put out by Emmert on Thursday:
“Today, sadly, the data point in the wrong direction. If there is to be college sports in the fall, we need to get a much better handle on the pandemic,” Emmert said in a statement.
On Friday, Finebaum made an appearance on ESPN’s morning show “Get Up” to discuss Emmert’s statement. Here is how Finebaum responded when asked to react to that comment from the NCAA president:
“They say that Mark Emmert is a complete failure at leadership,” Finebaum said on the show. “First of all, it was nice of Mark Emmert to come out of the witness protection program yesterday to let us know what we should all know about the college football season. He is the president of the NCAA. He makes three and a half million dollars a year and him telling us there’s a problem is like a meteorologist telling us during a hurricane that it’s raining outside.
“He is a complete, abject failure at leadership. He’s been derelict in his duty, and quite frankly, I think he should be fired. We might wait to this storm passes to get rid of him, but he has no use whatsoever except taking up the airwaves with idiotic, inane and unimportant statements. So, bottom line is that Mack Brown is saying what a lot of people are saying, college football needs leadership. They have five conference commissioners, but no one, no one is in charge.”
If that statement alone wasn’t strong enough, Finebaum went on to detail how replacing the NCAA President alone is not enough to fix the issues facing college football and college athletics as a whole:
“Emmert, like the groundhog, he just sticks his head up in the air to see which way the wind is blowing. He drops a statement out to the waiting media, and then he goes back into his hole or his bunker,” Finebaum added. “That’s not what this sport needs.
“And frankly, the NCAA has really been deemed useless and what Dominic said is 100 percent correct, Emmert’s been fighting the professionalism of sports, he’s been fighting the NIL and that’s why it needs to be blown up and we need to start over again because this is a terrible system.”