Paul Finebaum, Kirk Herbstreit, other CFB media personalties ranked by how biased they are
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The media landscape around college football is constantly accused of being biased. FOX only ever sends its Big Noon Kickoff show to Big Ten games — the network’s primary media partner. ESPN only ever sends its show, College GameDay, to SEC or ACC games. The folks who talk about the College Football Playoff each week are biased toward this team or that team, and they hate your favorite team.
Awful Announcing attempted to quantify these biases.
The outlet conducted a poll of its own readers recently, asking them to assess the objectivity of 40 different college football media personalities as it relates to different conferences. (The methodology for which 40 were selected is explained here.)
Unsurprisingly, SEC Network’s Paul Finebaum, affectionately nicknamed “The Mouth of the South,” was ranked as the most biased of the group. The rest of the top 10 is below:
- Paul Finebaum, ESPN: biased toward the SEC
- Dave Portnoy, Barstool/FOX: biased toward the Big Ten
- Nick Saban, ESPN: biased toward the SEC
- Clay Travis, Outkick/FOX: biased toward the Big Ten
- Brandon Walker, Barstool/FS1: biased toward the SEC
- Greg McElroy, ESPN: biased toward the SEC
- Booger McFarland, ESPN: biased toward the SEC
- Kirk Herbstreit, ESPN: biased toward the SEC
- Brady Quinn, FOX: biased toward Notre Dame
- Taylor Lewan, BWTB podcast/ESPN: biased toward the Big Ten
Awful Announcing also provided a list of media folks who had a single-digit bias score in their poll, reflecting “minimal” bias toward any one specific league or team. That list included ESPN’s Pat McAfee, On3’s Ari Wasserman, NBC’s Nicole Auerbach, ESPN’s Scott Van Pelt, and FOX’s Colin Cowherd.
Derek Peterson does a bit of everything, not unlike Taysom Hill. He has covered Oklahoma, Nebraska, the Pac-12, and now delivers CFB-wide content.
