Paul Finebaum was standing next to Tim Tebow when Pablo Torre\u2019s reporting landed on the SEC Network\u2019s doorstep, and he wanted no part of the crossfire.<\/p>\n
Appearing on the Awful Announcing Podcast,<\/a> Finebaum recalled being with Tebow in Gainesville as the fallout from Torre\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n Asked whether it was strange \u2014 or even awkward \u2014 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.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Yes. I was with him that day,\u201d said Finebaum. \u201cIt came out that morning. I think we were in Gainesville. I\u2019m trying to remember. And I just said something to him. I said, \u2018I hope you\u2019re doing okay.\u2019 And he looked at me, and he put his arm around me and said, \u2018We\u2019ll get through it.\u2019 \u2026 And I didn\u2019t say anything else. I didn\u2019t say, \u2018Hey, I know Pablo. I respect Pablo.\u2019 I just\u2026 But that\u2019s how Tim is.<\/p>\n \u201cI 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\u2019s not somebody you have to think, \u2018Oh my goodness, he\u2019s going to violate a confidence.\u2019 So that\u2019s all I offered. I didn\u2019t say much else because it really wasn\u2019t my place. Nor did I call Pablo, and thank goodness Pablo didn\u2019t call me.\u201d<\/p>\n In his initial episode, Torre detailed Tebow\u2019s involvement with a Christian organization called Life Surge<\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s more from Awful Announcing\u2019s Drew Lerner:<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s events, as multiple former attendees told Torre, are designed to convince people to sign up for the organization\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s message is that achieving financial success can help advance the mission of Christianity.<\/p>\n To help people afford the five-figure cost of Life Surge\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n Tebow didn\u2019t answer Torre\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n The SEC Network analyst eventually addressed\u00a0the allegations, taking questions from reporters in Gainesville before appearing on Finebaum\u2019s show ahead of Florida\u2019s game against Ole Miss. He called the claims extremely serious and said he was pausing his relationship with Life Surge<\/a> 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 \u201ccaught off guard\u201d by some of it, though Torre had tried to reach him several times before the episode went live.<\/p>\n \u201cI think the allegations are extremely, extremely serious,\u201d Tebow acknowledged. \u201cAnd it\u2019s something that we take very serious. For us, we\u2019re 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.\u2019<\/p>\n 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\u2019s alma mater for the Gators\u2019 home game against Ole Miss.<\/p>\n \u201cTim was never going to take that week off, especially in Gainesville,\u201d said Finebaum. \u201cI\u2019ve worked with him now since 2014, and I don\u2019t think he\u2019s ever missed a show. And that\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p>\n Finebaum went on to vouch for Tebow\u2019s philanthropy, pointing to his own attendance at Tebow\u2019s 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\u2019s reporting, noting he had never been to one of Tebow\u2019s 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\u2019t absorbed its specifics.<\/p>\n \u201cI know this is going to sound like a political statement here, but I really don\u2019t know any of the details of what Pablo was [reporting]. Did I watch it? Sure. I mean, I was as interested as you,\u201d Finebaum conceded.<\/p>\n Since then, in addition to Tebow, Boston Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla has also distanced himself from Life Surge<\/a>. But a follow-up report from Torre<\/a> this week showed former ESPN anchor Sage Steele still serving as a Life Surge spokesperson<\/a>, taking the stage at the group\u2019s Oct. 10 event in Charlotte despite the allegations that it preys on its own attendees.<\/p>\n Finebaum, for his part, sounds content to keep the same distance he kept that day in Gainesville.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Paul Finebaum was standing next to Tim Tebow when Pablo Torre\u2019s reporting landed on the SEC Network\u2019s doorstep,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1035152,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[8713,7,132297,49,48,14183,15115,8007,6875,614],"class_list":["post-1035151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaa-football","tag-awful-announcing-podcast","tag-football","tag-life-surge","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-football","tag-pablo-torre","tag-pablo-torre-finds-out","tag-paul-finebaum","tag-sec-network","tag-tim-tebow"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/117491816532999686","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1035151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1035151"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1035151\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1035152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1035151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1035151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1035151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}