Paul Finebaum says ESPN did, indeed, sideline him after an interview with OutKick last year.

Last September, Finebaum told Clay Travis during a podcast that he was considering leaving ESPN to run for U.S. Senate in Alabama as a Republican, revealing that he had also voted for President Donald Trump in 2024. A week later, Travis reported that ESPN had removed Finebaum from his scheduled television appearances because of the interview.

"Per sources: Disney/ESPN has removed @finebaum from appearing on @ESPN since his @outkick interview expressing interest in running as a Republican for senate in Alabama. ESPN has canceled all network appearances on all shows, including some that have occurred for a decade plus," Travis posted on X.

An ESPN public relations executive disputed the report, despite the obvious fact that Finebaum had disappeared from his usual ESPN television appearances, even following a weekend of major college football upsets.

"This is not true at all. The below is TOTALLY FALSE," ESPN's Bill Hofheimer wrote above Travis' report.

Finebaum sided with Travis' version of events this week.

"Of course, I was sidelined," Finebaum told Awful Announcing when asked about the story. "I’d done the same shows every day for 13 years, and the next thing you know, I’m not on there after a college football weekend."

OutKick asked ESPN for comment Thursday following Finebaum's remarks. The network sent the following statement:

"As we stated last year, Finebaum was never banned."

The dispute is largely a matter of semantics. Finebaum was not booked for his regular appearances on shows like SportsCenter and Get Up the week after his interview with OutKick. He did, however, continue hosting his eponymous show on SEC Network and ESPN Radio. He remained on some ESPN platforms.

The network can also claim it simply chose not to book him for certain television appearances and tried out other personalities in case Finebaum ultimately left the company to run for office. In fact, that is what we hear ESPN told people who inquired at the time.

As a matter of technicality, ESPN did not "ban" Finebaum. However, what is technically true is not always the same as what is obvious.

What appears obvious is that ESPN responded to Finebaum's interview by not booking him on the shows he has spent the past decade appearing on during the college football season.

Further, it would have been understandable for ESPN to take issue with Finebaum making national news about a potential political campaign while still employed by the company. We wouldn't have faulted ESPN for deciding not to use Finebaum on television while he was publicly flirting with a run for office, which he ultimately decided against.

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The issue is the double standard.

Stephen A. Smith has spent years publicly discussing the possibility of running for president as a Democrat. ESPN did not respond by removing him from his regular television appearances or publicly preparing replacements in case he left the company to seek office.

That contrast makes ESPN's handling of Finebaum harder to dismiss as ordinary programming rotation.

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Finally, there is the broader question of how much longer Finebaum will remain at ESPN.

Nearly every football season seems to bring another story about Finebaum potentially leaving the network, whether for political office or a media competitor. At some point, that recurring uncertainty begins to say something about the partnership.

A columnist took a victory lap Tuesday as The Washington Post was ordered to give her back pay after she challenged her firing last year.

"POV: Channeling my inner Rihanna because I won my case against the @washingtonpost — and they owe me a year’s worth of back pay," Karen Attiah wrote on X while sharing a video of her dancing to a Rihanna song.

In August, an arbitrator ordered the Post to reinstate her employment and give her back pay, saying the paper "did not have good and sufficient cause" and that it "violated" her labor agreement.

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"I'm still processing everything, but overall, I am happy I have been vindicated and ordered reinstated with back pay," Attiah told Fox News Digital. "But in the meantime, I just wanted to put on a pretty gold dress, vibe to Rihanna’s music and eat cake! I wanted to be as loud about the win as possible so that other journalists will not be afraid to speak the truth."

Attiah said her post was inspired by a video she liked from her party and "wanted to show that I take celebrating this huge win — for me, the Guild [the Washington Post union] and for journalism — very seriously!"

It remains unclear whether she will formally return to work despite the arbitrator's order. A spokesperson for The Washington Post told Fox News Digital the paper respects the arbitration process and declined to comment further.

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Attiah sparked outrage last year for her posts about slain conservative icon Charlie Kirk on the liberal social media platform Bluesky following his assassination.

"Refusing to tear my clothes and smear ashes on my face in performative mourning for a White man that espoused violence is… not the same as violence," Attiah wrote at the time. In a separate post, she wrote, "Part of what keeps America so violent is the insistence that people perform care, empty goodness and absolution for White men who espouse hatred and violence.’"

Critics also slammed Attiah for misquoting Kirk in another post, attributing to him saying, "Black women do not have the brain processing power to be taken seriously. You have to go steal a White person's slot."

On a July 2023 episode of "The Charlie Kirk Show," Kirk actually said, "If we would have said three weeks ago [...] that Joy Reid and Michelle Obama, and Sheila Jackson Lee, and Ketanji Brown Jackson were affirmative-action picks, we would have been called racist. But now they're comin' out and they're saying it for us! They're comin' out, and they're saying, 'I'm only here because of affirmative action.' Yeah, we know. You do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously. You had to go steal a White person's slot to go be taken somewhat seriously."

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Following the backlash, Attiah revealed she had been fired by the Post, saying in a termination letter her posts were "unacceptable" and "gross misconduct."

Attiah filed a legal challenge against the Post over her termination last fall, and previously announced in June that she and the paper would enter arbitration.

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