Paul Finebaum says he believes Alabama is ‘underrated’ entering 2025 season
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Paul Finebaum is as close to the Alabama football program as anyone in the media, and he’s usually as hard on the Crimson Tide as anyone out there.
But the ESPN college football analyst took a different tone on Alabama during an appearance on Get Up on Tuesday morning. The Crimson Tide have won’t a national title since 2020, which in this century full of championship glory qualifies as a huge drought. They are coming off a disappointing 9-4 season in 2024, when they lost an unfathomable 3 SEC games and struggled to win on the road in Kalen DeBoer’s first year in Tuscaloosa.
The legendary Nick Saban is long gone, and the 6 national titles he led Alabama to between 2009 and 2020 are a distant memory now, too. This means that Alabama isn’t quite the Alabama the college football world has come to know in the past few decades. Throw in having to adjust to a new quarterback in 2025 after Jalen Milroe’s departure to the NFL and there are justifiable questions about the Crimson Tide going into this fall.
Watch out though, said Finebaum on Tuesday morning during his appearance on ESPN. Just maybe, Alabama isn’t getting the attention it quite deserves for once, with the Crimson Tide being ranked 8th in Monday’s preseason Coaches’ Poll.
“Think about this for a second. Alabama is ranked lower in this poll than in any [preseason] poll since 2008. Ultimately, this looks bad to me. It looks like Alabama is underrated. I think they’re better than this,” explained Finebaum to fellow ESPN analyst Heather Dinich.
The coming months will answer that underrated question on Alabama, and the Crimson Tide have that time to prove if the preseason Coaches’ Poll got it right or wrong.
Cory Nightingale, a former sportswriter and sports editor at the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post, is a South Florida-based freelance writer who covers Alabama for SaturdayDownSouth.com.
