ESPN’s Paul Finebaum slammed fellow sports talker Stephen A. Smith for Smith’s “terribly unfair” decision to make the issues surrounding the future of Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin all about race.
Smith threw the race card on Wednesday’s First Take when the panel was discussing whether Kiffin should bow out of Ole Miss and get in the running for a coaching position in the SEC, or Florida, or LSU.
Kiffin’s Rebels are at 10-1 right now and are no. 6 in the College Football Playoff rankings, but Smith saw a way to shoehorn race into the issue, according to the New York Post.
“Let’s get this out of the way. Now, listen, ladies and gentlemen, I’m gonna say it. Y’all can’t say it. Don’t you dare say it, Paul. Don’t you dare say it, Doggie. Don’t you say it, Shae. Leave it to me. I’ll say it. The brothers ain’t trying to come to Oxford, Miss., for the most part, compared to Gainesville or Baton Rouge, La. Let’s just call it what it is, OK?” Smith said.
“You look at the job that Lane Kiffin has done at Ole Miss, it’s phenomenal. The man has won 74% of his games over the last 6 years. Ole Miss, they’re in the picture,” he blathered on. “They can win a national championship. Lane Kiffin, his personality, his cachet, it ain’t Nick Saban he’s got to worry about. He’s got the potential to be another Nick Saban, but it ain’t gonna happen at Ole Miss. Not for years down the road to come. No, no, no, no, no, no. But Gainesville, at the University of Florida? But Baton Rouge, Death Valley, LSU? That’s a different animal.”
Smith went on to say that, from a “recruiting standpoint,” Ole Miss won’t get the top-tier black players.
But on his own program, Finebaum felt Smith’s racial angle was just “wrong” and was unhappy that Smith “clearly made it racial.”
“He clearly said, in his words, ‘the brothers do not want to go to Oxford, Miss.,’ which has been proven to be completely incorrect,” he said.
“I’ve been to Oxford a million times, and I think it’s terribly unfair to bring up echoes of yesteryear, the ’60s, and try to portray Oxford as that type of place today. It’s not. The South has changed. You can make your own interpretation, but to dump on Oxford while saying that Gainesville and Baton Rouge would be utopia was just baffling to me,” he continued.
Both LSU and Florida now have openings after Brian Kelly and Billy Napier were fired. And many are speculating that Kiffen could be in the running for either position. And some reports claimed that some of Kiffen’s family toured Baron Rouge recently.
Smith has a history of throwing the race card in his sports commentary.
In August, for instance, he claimed that white sports analysts should not be allowed to comment on black players’ actions on the field during fights between players.
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