Texas Football: Finebaum has valid gripe calling for firing of Mark Emmert

In a bold discussion on ESPN’s “Get Up” heading into the weekend, a voice well known to Texas football made his thoughts known on the NCAA president.

This is going to be an unpredictable set of events concerning the Texas football program as we move closer and closer to the beginning of what is supposed to be the kickoff of Week 0 or Week 1 for the 2020 college football season. A multitude of Power Five conferences have already announced that they will not be playing their non-con schedules this fall.

And that might just be the first move that is made among the Power Five conferences to adjust the looming season in the midst of the novel coronavirus pandemic. But as of the evening of July 18, the Longhorns are not one of the many college football programs around the entire country that were impacted by the changes to the non-conference schedules.

This could all change in the blink of an eye, though.

What we do know is that something major will change barring a complete miracle with the COVID-19 pandemic just disappearing into thin air (which will not be a reality). The Longhorns and the Big 12 are likely to have to wait until at least next month until concrete changes are made. Any changes that come anytime sooner likely would not be a good sign for the 2020 season happening anything close to what was planned for this fall.

However, a prominent voice around the college football media landscape did speak his mind on the leadership backing this sport heading deeper into the summer months. ESPN college football media personality Paul Finebaum gave his take on the supposed leadership from the NCAA and president Mark Emmert on the morning show “Get Up” on July 17.

Finebaum had the strong take of going all the way to say that Emmert should “be fired” for what has happened during the 2020 offseason and in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Here’s more on what Finebaum had to say on this matter (monologue courtesy of 247Sports).

"“(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.”"

As far as how the leadership of college football right now impacts the Longhorns, most of the tangible alterations for the coming season are yet to be seen. But that lack of uncertainty does shed some light into the lack of continuity from the top-down.

Finebaum does make the point here that Emmert doesn’t hold much power in the decision making here, and a recent statement from the NCAA president didn’t go far beyond stating the obvious of COVID-19 at this point in time. There is no uniformity to the plan of how college football should enter the 2020 season, despite kickoff supposedly set for just over a month away.

A good example of the lack of uniformity is the fact that three of the Power Five conferences seem set on not playing a non-conference schedule, while the Big 12 and SEC do. This leaves doubt as to the structure of the College Football Playoff, non-conference schedules for those Big 12 and SEC teams facing an opponent from the other three Power Five conferences, and what to do about all of the FCS and Group of Five schools that depend so heavily on their football programs to foot the bill for the balanced budget.

Blame can’t be placed squarely on the shoulders of any leading voice in the college football landscape for how the COVID-19 pandemic will change the 2020 season. But there does need to be more consistency across the board if there is to be some semblance of a function season.

The Colonial Athletic Association was the latest of a number of FCS conferences to rid of fall sports in 2020 in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic (confirmed by ESPN report). This is just yet another sign of how a bigger program like that of the Longhorns could be impacted by a lack of leadership and uniformity in the college football landscape just ahead of the planned start to the 2020 season.