Finebaum’s show, which airs on three dozen stations throughout the South and can be heard nationwide on Sirius XM, was the venue through which a fan describing himself as “Al from Dadeville” chose to boast that he poisoned the 130-year-old oak trees of Toomer’s Corner at Auburn University.

Alabama fan Harvey Updyke, whom investigators believe to be “Al,” was arrested, charged with a felony and released on bail. And the bizarro world of SEC craziness, which knows no offseason, is in full cry.

“We are well outside the solar system and into some far-off place in the universe,” Finebaum said Thursday.

The odd thing is that Finebaum is drawing fire from some observers, even though the call from “Al” was unsolicited and Finebaum said he and his staff “played a pretty big role” in the suspect’s arrest.

Finebaum compared the situation to the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., which one law enforcement officer suggested was triggered by overheated talk radio rhetoric. Rather than shrinking from the subject, however, Finebaum’s show has featured one of Updyke’s friends and his attorney, and the Auburn-Alabama unpleasantness continues to be a dominant topic of conversation.

“A lot of hosts would want to run away from this,” Finebaum said. “But this is who we are. This is an average guy who is an Alabama fan who decided to admit a crime, and it didn’t surprise anyone.

“It comes from one basic fact: Unlike many shows around the country, we really do let the inmates run the asylum, and as a result you get this sort of freakish moment.”

If nothing else, it’s good radio.

“As we have grown from a local show to a regional show to one that now has a national platform on Sirius XM, the show has gotten bigger, and there really isn’t anything like it,” he said.

“We’ve been compared to Jerry Springer, but, at the risk of sounding like the Beatles in the 1960s (with John Lennon’s “more popular than Jesus” comment), I think we’re bigger than Jerry Springer.”