Paul Finebaum calls for NCAA President Mark Emmert to be fired

As uncertainty continues to mount over the 2020 college football season due to the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, the situation has shown everyone that one long-held critique of the sport still remains true: That is, no single individual is truly in charge of college football. It's a reality that North Carolina head coach Mack Brown lamented over on Thursday during an appearance on the Paul Finebaum Show, and moreover, some see it as an indictment of the NCAA's leadership.

On Friday morning, Paul Finebaum -- a day removed from interviewing Brown -- joined Get Up to give his own take on the lack of overarching authority in college football. And according to the radio host, the first step in fixing the problem may very well be replacing some of the leadership within the NCAA -- specifically, NCAA president Mark Emmert. Finebaum, during his segment, said that college football's perpetual problem has shown a "complete failure of leadership" on Emmert's part before calling for the NCAA President to be terminated from his position.

"(Brown's comments) say that Mark Emmert is a complete failure of leadership," Finebaum said. "First of all, it was nice of Mark Emmert to come out of the 'Witness Protection Program' yesterday to let us know what we should all know about the college football season. He's the president of the NCAA. He makes $3.5 million a year. And him telling us there is a problem is like a meteorologist telling us during a hurricane that it is raining outside.

"(Emmert) is a complete, abject failure of leadership ... quite frankly, I think he should be fired. We might wait until this storm passes to get rid of him, but he has no use whatsoever except taking up airwaves with idiotic, inane and unimportant statements. The bottom line, Mack Brown is saying what a lot of people are saying: College football needs leadership. We have five (power) conference commissioners, but no one is in charge."

College football is run by the Power Five commissioners and subsequent commissioners of other conferences throughout Division 1 football. The NCAA as a whole features Emmert, but there is not a single entity running the daily dealings of college football, arguably the second most popular sport in the United States, behind, well, professional football.

Emmert, 67, has served as the NCAA President since November 2010.

While a lack of uniformity has long been a critique of college football, the issue has been as evident as ever in recent weeks as conferences attempt to hold a season in a safe manner this fall. As of now, it doesn’t appear NCAA Division 1 football is on the same page, at least with the upcoming season. Due to the pandemic, conferences are adjusting their regular season plans on the fly. The Big Ten and PAC 12 already announced plans to play a conference only schedule for the season in order to mandate control over COVID-19 testing protocols and safety, rather than risk a mix up of protocols with other conferences on their respective team’s schedules.

“I really wish we’d have a commissioner of college football. We wouldn’t have different leagues doing different things and so much uncertainty," Brown said of the situation on Thursday. "If we were more uniform and all on the same page ... then we wouldn’t be in the position we are in right now. I think that's something we have to do moving forward. It's never been more obvious that we have to be on the same page.”

On Thursday, NCAA Sport Science Institute released an updated report to help provide guidance to schools to help protect student-athletes and prevent the spread of COVID-19, in which Emmert issued a rather grim outlook for the state of Fall sport in 2020 as the virus continues to spread.

“When we made the extremely difficult decision to cancel last spring’s championships it was because there was simply no way to conduct them safely,” Emmert said. “This document lays out the advice of health care professionals as to how to resume college sports if we can achieve an environment where COVID-19 rates are manageable. Today, sadly, the data point in the wrong direction. If there are to be college sports in the fall, we need to get a much better handle on the pandemic.”

SOURCE: Straka, Dean. "Paul Finebaum calls for NCAA President Mark Emmert to be fired." 247Sports.com, 17 July 2020, https://247sports.com/Article/Paul-Finebaum-calls-for-NCAA-President-Mark-Emmert-to-be-fired--149253311/