During Christmas and summer breaks when I was a kid, I would sometimes (for whatever reason I have no idea) get into the show Days of Our Lives. I’m pretty sure it’s because it was on at my grandmother’s house, and I was also captivated by the long-running plot of Carly being buried alive by an evil woman named Vivian.
Not even that storyline had more twists and turns than that of TJ Finley’s college football career, which took another spin on Wednesday when it was announced that he was no longer with the Incarnate Word program.
Sure, players leave programs all the time, but Finley’s path from signing with LSU as a 4-star signee in (yikes!) 2019 has been a long and winding one. Incarnate Word was the Louisiana native’s seventh stop, with him traveling to the Texas school via the Bayou Bengals, Auburn, Texas State, Western Kentucky and Georgia State.
TJ Finley went to seven schools during his college career
His reason for leaving the program and not enrolling at Incarnate Word? He plans on entering the 2026 NFL Draft. I will now wait for the laughter to die down.
Finley’s career has been a bust long before he arrived at Incarnate Word, with his only solid season coming for Texas State in 2023 when he threw for 3,434 yards and 24 touchdowns to eight interceptions. The rest has been a long line of mediocre performances, switching schools so often that his friends and family are the only ones who can keep track and losing football games.
Take, for example, his play for Georgia State in 2025. In six starts, the Panthers went a measly 1-5, with Finley throwing six touchdowns to seven interceptions. That’s not exactly Fernando Mendoza-like numbers, and definitely not stats that will impress NFL scouts.
Oh well. Good luck to Finley on his next stop. He will always have the fourth-down pass to Shedrick Jackson way back in 2021, Bryan Harsin’s first year on the Plains, to help beat Georgia State. Hopefully, that is on his NFL scout highlight reel.