Paul Finebaum was standing next to Tim Tebow when Pablo Torre’s reporting landed on the SEC Network’s doorstep, and he wanted no part of the crossfire.
Appearing on the Awful Announcing Podcast, Finebaum recalled being with Tebow in Gainesville as the fallout from Torre’s investigation reached the set. Finebaum has worked alongside Tebow since 2014, but he also has a relationship with Torre, having appeared with him on MSNBC and sat for an episode of Pablo Torre Finds Out roughly a year ago.
Asked whether it was strange — or even awkward — to watch Torre publish such an unflattering portrait of a colleague he sits beside every Saturday, Finebaum admitted it was and described the brief moment he shared with Tebow that day.
Yes. I was with him that day,” said Finebaum. “It came out that morning. I think we were in Gainesville. I’m trying to remember. And I just said something to him. I said, ‘I hope you’re doing okay.’ And he looked at me, and he put his arm around me and said, ‘We’ll get through it.’ … And I didn’t say anything else. I didn’t say, ‘Hey, I know Pablo. I respect Pablo.’ I just… But that’s how Tim is.
“I confided with Tim in things that I was thinking about doing, especially last year, before almost anybody else. And the reason is I trust him. He’s not somebody you have to think, ‘Oh my goodness, he’s going to violate a confidence.’ So that’s all I offered. I didn’t say much else because it really wasn’t my place. Nor did I call Pablo, and thank goodness Pablo didn’t call me.”
In his initial episode, Torre detailed Tebow’s involvement with a Christian organization called Life Surge, which contracted the former star quarterback to give speeches at dozens of events over the past five years. As Torre explains, Life Surge is a nationwide Christian organization that holds events across the country featuring prominent speakers and entertainers, from athletes to television personalities to comedians and musicians.
Here’s more from Awful Announcing’s Drew Lerner:
Tebow quickly became a headliner of sorts for the organization, with plans to speak at Life Surge over 20 times this calendar year. Torre reports that Tebow earns between $50,000 and $100,000 per appearance, a figure that Life Surge declined to confirm. In other words, Torre presents a convincing case that Tebow is intimately involved in the organization.
Torre reported that Life Surge typically charges around $30 per ticket to one of its events where Tebow speaks, but the low price quickly becomes an entry point to get people in the door. Much of Life Surge’s events, as multiple former attendees told Torre, are designed to convince people to sign up for the organization’s supposedly educational classes on navigating the stock market or making money in real estate. Attendees pay $97 for introductory courses, but that is only the beginning of a much larger cash grab that Torre contends is predatory.
Attendees are then presented with a pamphlet listing several options, all upwards of $10,000, with some reaching as high as $50,000, for what is framed as mentorship and coaching on how to succeed in the stock market or flipping real estate. Central to Life Surge’s message is that achieving financial success can help advance the mission of Christianity.
To help people afford the five-figure cost of Life Surge’s mentorship, the organization provided third-party brokers at these introductory classes who helped attendees apply for one or more credit cards at temporary 0% interest rates (which later rose as high as 30%) to pay for the services. Life Surge also reportedly encouraged attendees to take out lines of credit on their homes and retirement accounts to afford their mentorship.
Tebow didn’t answer Torre’s repeated requests for comment, and Torre ended the episode by suggesting Tebow was either badly uninformed about how Life Surge made its money or complicit in it.
The SEC Network analyst eventually addressed the allegations, taking questions from reporters in Gainesville before appearing on Finebaum’s show ahead of Florida’s game against Ole Miss. He called the claims extremely serious and said he was pausing his relationship with Life Surge while his team conducted its own investigation. Tebow said he learned about the report from his staff as they flew to Alabama for an event after he attended an anti-human trafficking conference, describing himself as “caught off guard” by some of it, though Torre had tried to reach him several times before the episode went live.
“I think the allegations are extremely, extremely serious,” Tebow acknowledged. “And it’s something that we take very serious. For us, we’re having our team do an investigation, but also pausing our relationship til we can learn more about the facts to be able to understand more.’
Asked whether anyone broached the idea of Tebow sitting out that week, Finebaum said it was never on the table, least of all with the show parked in Tebow’s alma mater for the Gators’ home game against Ole Miss.
“Tim was never going to take that week off, especially in Gainesville,” said Finebaum. “I’ve worked with him now since 2014, and I don’t think he’s ever missed a show. And that’s pretty remarkable because I have seen him the night before a Saturday show fly from Auburn to Phoenix and back. He is that dedicated to what he does.”
Finebaum went on to vouch for Tebow’s philanthropy, pointing to his own attendance at Tebow’s charity golf tournament and dinner as evidence of the work. He drew a firm line between those events and the paid speaking circuit at the center of Torre’s reporting, noting he had never been to one of Tebow’s speeches. When the conversation circled back to Life Surge, Finebaum declined to either defend Tebow or challenge anything Torre had uncovered, acknowledging he had watched the PTFO episode while insisting he hadn’t absorbed its specifics.
“I know this is going to sound like a political statement here, but I really don’t know any of the details of what Pablo was [reporting]. Did I watch it? Sure. I mean, I was as interested as you,” Finebaum conceded.
Since then, in addition to Tebow, Boston Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla has also distanced himself from Life Surge. But a follow-up report from Torre this week showed former ESPN anchor Sage Steele still serving as a Life Surge spokesperson, taking the stage at the group’s Oct. 10 event in Charlotte despite the allegations that it preys on its own attendees.
Finebaum, for his part, sounds content to keep the same distance he kept that day in Gainesville.
The post Paul Finebaum recalls being with Tim Tebow the day Pablo Torre’s Life Surge report hit appeared first on Awful Announcing.