Paul Finebaum to air on Columbus station

Radio host Paul Finebaum, a long-time voice of SEC football, will have his show aired on Columbus radio starting next week.

(Travis Bell / ESPN Images)

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Ohio State fans in Columbus may want to get ready to yell at their radios.

Unless they might actually agree with what Paul Finebaum, the most famous media voice of the SEC, has to say about Ohio State.

"The Paul Finebaum Show" will begin to air on 1460 AM in Columbus on Monday, filling four hours each day from 3-7 p.m., replacing other national ESPN programming that previously filled those hours.

A University of Tennessee graduate and long-time reporter, columnist and radio host in Alabama, Finebaum's radio show has been simulcast on the SEC Network since 2014, and broadcast on other ESPN affiliates and SiriusXM satellite radio.

So people outside the South have heard him, including Ohio State fans. Now he's coming to them. The move to Columbus will make 1460 AM the only station in Ohio to carry Finebaum. In fact, it's the only one of 52 stations airing Finebaum that's outside SEC territory.

He's still that guy from the South.

I spoke with Finebaum on Friday, (and have appeared on his show a time or two in the past), and I asked if he is pro-SEC.

"I think the honest answer is yes," he said after a pause. "I try to deal in the real world. I've been a newspaper reporter and a columnist and I think when you live in a certain region and you go to school in a certain area, you tend to root for that region.

"Having said that, I do try to keep it real."

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Finebaum called the day after Ohio State's win over Alabama in the 2015 Sugar Bowl playoff semifinal one of the most entertaining four hours of his career, as Ohio State callers besieged him to gloat. It was at that moment that he started thinking he needed to get into Ohio markets.

When ESPN took over full syndication of his radio show two weeks ago, they went to work making that happen.

Finebaum said he won't change his content - he's already national on the SEC Network and satellite radio - but he'll continue to talk college football year-round. That might work in Ohio - especially because he said Alabama and Ohio State fans are so much alike.

"I think Ohio State fans and Alabama fans are almost interchangeable," Finebaum said. "They both have great tradition, they both have the biggest and best of everything and they both have the two best coaches in college football.

"So there's a lot of commonality. And they both have that iconic, bigger-than-life coach in the past in (Woody) Hayes and (Bear) Bryant. And they both have bigger-than-life coaches now.

"I feel like I understand (Ohio State fans)."

Those fans will have an easier time listening to Finebaum now. He might get them, but there still will be times they're yelling at the radio.