Are you a fan of bombastic SEC personality Paul Finebaum? If you answered that query in the affirmative, the folks at ESPN have something up their sleeve for you.
Playing off the success of the BCS National Championship multi-cast, Sports Illustrated media writer Richard Deitsch wrote Monday that ESPN planned to provide a simulcast of Saturday’s AP No. 15 Alabama at No. 1 Alabama tilt on SEC Network with Finebaum taking calls throughout the game. The show will be called Finebaum Film Room: Iron Bowl Live.I dig the @finebaum experiment for the Iron Bowl. Little downside. Fun alternative. Kudos to ESPN exec who thought of it.
— Richard Deitsch (@richarddeitsch) November 24, 2014
The simulcast was borne out of rare circumstances. First, ESPN had to gain rights to televise the Iron Bowl in the first place - a rarity in recent years, ESPN has aired the game once in the past decade - which it did thanks to CBS reaching its contractual limit of five Alabama broadcasts with the Mississippi State game on Nov. 15.
CBS picked up the Egg Bowl, which meant ESPN was free to grab the Iron Bowl and plunk it in a primetime slot of 7:45 p.m. ET.
Next, SEC Network had to have the free airspace with which to air this Finebaum-mania. The SEC Thanksgiving weekend schedule is traditionally sparse, and especially so this year: LSU visits Texas A&M on Thursday night, Arkansas visits Missouri on Friday, and SEC-ACC rivalries pitting Florida and Florida State, South Carolina and Clemson and Kentucky and Louisville all swung to the ACC’s television package this season. With only Georgia Tech at Georgia and Tennessee at Vanderbilt on the docket, SEC Network had the space to run its simulcast.