Paul Finebaum explains how Harvey Updyke call got on-air, expresses regret
By Keith Farner
Published:
A controversial call on “The Paul Finebaum Show” on Friday has drawn plenty of attention in recent days, and on Monday, Finebaum explained how it unfolded.
Harvey Updyke, the Alabama fan who poisoned the Toomer’s Corners trees at Auburn following the 2010 Iron Bowl, and later called in under the name “Al from Dadeville” to discuss the incident, called back. He was ultimately sentenced to just over 75 days in prison and ordered to pay $800,000 in restitution. Since then, he’s paid little back to Lee County, Alabama.
On Friday, ahead of No. 2 Alabama’s huge battle against No. 1 LSU in Tuscaloosa, he called back into the show to once again answer for his actions, saying that he didn’t mean to poison the trees.
“Paul, they’re only trees,” Updyke replied to some cheers from the Alabama fans attending the live taping of the show in Tuscaloosa. “I didn’t try to kill those crows that fly around. I didn’t try to kill LSU’s tiger.”
On Monday, Finebaum responded to how the call happened during an exchange with “Coach from Morristown.”
“Interesting Friday for you, I know,” Coach said. “Is Mike the Tiger in jeopardy?”
Finebaum replied, “I just want to address that and then we’ll move on. Listen, we take phone calls here, we don’t often know what’s going on. When the tree poisoner called in, we didn’t know it was him until we were talking to him. I think if we had to do this over again, we probably would have moved on without any rancor. But he was on the air, he said some idiotic things, which I tried to point out and I personally regret having to subject some of our friends out there to listening to this raving idiot.”
A former newspaper veteran, Keith Farner is a news manager for Saturday Down South.
