Mike Francesa and Chris 'Mad Dog' Russo, sports-radio pioneers, grade their ESPN moment

July 11, 2017 3:40 PM PT

Reporting from NEW YORK —

The sports-talk hosts Mike Francesa and Chris “Mad Dog” Russo broke up their landmark radio partnership in 2008. But when they get together these days it’s like no time has passed at all.

“Mike,” Russo says as they sit down to breakfast at a Midtown Manhattan restaurant.

“Dog,” Francesa acknowledges, pronouncing it “dawg,” as one does on his native Long Island.

The two then launch into a discussion of who might replace Francesa when he leaves New York’s WFAN in December for gigs unknown. Their patter has a kind of hard-boiled minimalism, Philip Marlowe by way of the Long Island Expressway.

“Sounds like he’s coming next week,” Francesa says of a host from another market.‎

“To do shows?” asks Russo, who joined Sirius when he left the FAN nine years ago.

”That’s what I heard.”

“Afternoon drive?”

“Afternoon drive. By himself.”

“[Phil] Simms’ kid in the mix?”

“Chris Simms.”

“Can he do other sports besides football?”

“Can’t tell yet.”

“So they don’t know what they’re doing.”

“Don’t know.”

“They think he’s going to stay!” Russo says, turning to a reporter with a trademark cackle. “Can you imagine? Dec. 18, everyone at the FAN comes to work and there’s Mike!”

“That’s not going to happen,” Francesa says.

It wouldn’t be a surprise to see Francesa sitting in perpetuity at the WFAN studio. In fact, it’s hard to imagine the station without the grand poobah of talk radio, just as it was hard to imagine him without Russo nine years ago.

Exchanges between the two — Francesa, 63, with his deep-voiced pronouncements, and Russo, 57, with his high-pitched excitement — not only cantillated New York listeners for nearly 20 years but changed the sound of radio itself. Their odd-couple pairing and intensely local knowledge provided a template for station managers across the country. Before the ubiquity of cable sports shows or social media — before the chance to learn split-second news online and express anger in 140 characters — “Mike and the Mad Dog” was a repository for it all.‎

The duo’s behind-the-glass story is told in a new ESPN 30 for 30, “Mike and the Mad Dog,” which debuts Thursday. As Los Angeles-based director Daniel Forer chronicles in the movie, when Francesa and Russo were first put together in late 1989, neither wanted to be with the other. They barely spoke outside of work, and the chilliness could be felt on the air. This pattern would be repeated in years to come, their relationship waylaid by fights, silences, détente and reconciliations, like the most intense married couple you know.‎

But listeners sparked to their chemistry. Soon dozens of copycat shows had sprung up across the country; anyone who has ever whiled away a traffic jam on the 10 listening to Petros and Money or Mason and Ireland owes Mike and the Mad Dog a debt of gratitude, or at least payback of some kind.‎

Forer’s documentary premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, where a screening turned into a kind of ad-hoc fan fest. The film is a rarity. ESPN does not often turn its eyes from athlete human-interest stories to those who cover them, let alone to folks employed by a rival. (ESPN Radio competes heavily with WFAN in the New York market.)‎

“I knew Danny [Forer] in the ’80s. He was very talented,” Francesa says at breakfast.

“He did a great job.”

“There are things I would have left out and put in of course.”

“More of the history, Mike?”

“Maybe a little.”

“Only 52 minutes but I thought it was great. Great job. Overall a B+, A-, wouldn’t you say Mike?”

“Yes. It told the story by showing how the show moved the sports needle. That was important to me. A big part of the legacy of ‘Mike and the Mad Dog,’ people didn’t know what to make of us. But we started breaking stories, to the point where we eclipsed a lot of those other guys [who’d done it before].”

They are dining before a morning of publicity rounds that will bring them to a CBS Digital appearance and then a much-promoted “town hall”-style on-air reunion at Sirius, emceed (nominally) by their longtime pal, actor and writer Chazz Palminteri.

In person, they have the same dynamic as they do on the radio — Francesa the Olympian-voiced declaimer and Russo the semi-manic foil. Talking to (or, more accurately, hearing) them can give you the sense you’ve managed to climb inside a radio show, like “Pleasantville” with more arguments about Phil Jackson. All you can do is hang up and listen.

“If we ever got back together, he would want to talk Wimbledon,” Francesa says, assuming his role as Russo-needler.

“What do you think about what McEnroe said?” Russo responds, referencing John McEnroe’s comment that Serena Williams would be ranked 700^th on the men’s tour.

“That’s what we should do, Dawg.”

“What?”

“Get McEnroe and Serena to play.”

“Like ‘Battle of the Sexes.’”

“He could win. She’d get a set, but I think he could win.”

“I’ve had McEnroe on. Have you ever had McEnroe on?”

Francesa and Russo offer an indulgence of our collective sports id. Listening to their shtick is a strange exercise in both amused observation — a detachment of Brechtian proportions — and quiet identification. There is, reassuringly, no situation too dire for a sports debate.

Such singlemindedness has made them wildly popular; there now is even an annual “Francesacon.” It also has inspired numerous parodies, including one in which Francesa defends the novelist Kazuo Ishiguro in the voice of sportsradio bombast and another in which a well-known imitator plays Francesa as Donald Trump’s vice president. (The host and the president are friends. More on that in a moment.)

What can seem like characters out of Central Casting to many Angelenos will bring a flash of recognition to any resident with roots in New York, particularly its outer boroughs and suburbs. Raised in tough working-class conditions in Long Beach, Francesa now lives in more upscale Manhasset — his neighbor, until recently, was Anthony Scaramucci, and Carson Daly lives down the block. Russo, who grew up upper-middle class, is a Greenwich, Connecticut, man.

In allegiances more important, Francesa is a Yankee lover and Russo, a San Francisco Giants fan, a hater.

Their conversation turns to the Bronx Bombers, as it so often does. “If we got back together, I’d kill Betances. And Mike would defend him!” Russo says, tossing around the name of an embattled Yankees reliever as though he was the most famous man in America.

At the CBS interview, they end up in a debate about which New York sports legends should end up on a city Mount Rushmore, should one presumably ever be devised and chiseled on the side of the Belt Parkway.

Even for hardcore fans, the names and teams can be dizzying. “Willis or Clyde as a Knick?” Russo peppers Francesa. “Seaver as a Met? Namath? You gotta have Namath. Messier for the Rangers.”

“Rod Gilbert won’t like that,” Francesa says. A moment later, he adds, “You gotta remember, a guy named Babe Ruth played here.”

They step into the elevator and continued the conversation with no beats missed, debating the health of Cleveland Indians manager Terry Francona and the summer fortunes of the Yankees’ young position players.

Next up on their media run is Sirius, more national than FAN. They compare the merits.

“You don’t have the hometown team at Sirius,” Russo says.

“You gotta think about the guy in the eighteen-wheeeler. He wants to hear about Auburn football,” Francesa continues‎.

“College football you can do every day. Baseball is regional. It won’t play in Walla Walla, Washington.”

“You can’t do five hours of Betances.”

As they step out into the street a man drives by and calls out to them. They know him — he is a Broadway theater connection who recently procured tickets for Russo’s mother to attend “Hamilton.” Russo steps up to thank him.

Francesa offers his assessment of the Lin-Manuel Miranda smash. “Hated it. Couldn’t stand the music. My wife hated it too.”

He is not the only one in his peer group to have strong feelings about the musical.

Yes, the Donald Trump question. A recent New York Times op-ed noted the FAN had become a bastion of pro-POTUS enthusiasm in blue New York City, driven by older working-class males. Both Russo and Francesa play down the phenomenon, noting that it’s just individual personalities, like morning host Boomer Esiason, who are supporters.

Francesa says he is friends with Trump — they wouldn’t go out socially but “if I saw him at a party he’d come over and give me a hug.” Russo says that he, grudgingly, voted for Hillary Clinton.

Francesa says that he sees the Trump question as less about the president himself than other social forces.

“I think he’s gone overboard to create a point with the media,” Francesa allows. “But the bottom line is what happened in this country—and I believe it start with the Bush-Gore election—is that it made everyone on either side think they couldn’t get a fair shake, especially from the media. And everyone went to their corners and never came out.”

(He did add, “If I was his media consultant I’d take away his Twitter. He’s killing himself.”)

At the Sirius Town Hall, the old “Mike and the Mad Dog” jingle plays, fans in throwback Mets jerseys gather and time has been telescoped. Russo barely has to say a word and Francesa smiles, knowing the memory about to be recounted. It quickly becomes clear some stories are recent and some are from the Super Bowl circa 1991. Sports-radio reminiscing is an exercise in “Arrival”-esque time compression. What happened first? What happened later? Who cares as long as it involves a good Bill Parcells punchline?

Mark Chernoff, a longtime FAN executive who first met Russo and Francesa in the early 1990’s, says the key to their appeal lies in their different personalities. “Dog wore his heat on his sleeve and Mike kept it under wraps, and I think people tuned in to hear that contrast.”

Could they be tuning in to hear it again?

Francesa and Russo are each careful about the possibility of a professional reunion. Russo says he’d welcome a recurring show with his old partner, while Francesa says he’d be open to that or other possibilities as long as he’s not doing the daily grind. “The idea of doing 5½ hours five days a week are behind me,” he said.

The possibility of a regular collaboration on Sirius isn’t off the table either; before the town hall, the company’s president, Scott Greenstein, had a warm informal chat with the two of them. (Francesa is contractually not allowed to take offers until after Dec 15.) Neither Russo nor Francesa believe he will negotiate a deal for even occasional appearances on FAN, while Chernoff says he hasn’t given up on that.

Back at breakfast, Francesa had allowed himself a moment of reflection at this crossroads moment.

“You get to a point in life where time is important. Time becomes finite for all of us,” he says. “I don’t want to be grinding away until I’m 70.”

”You don’t want to be in a position where someone forces you to leave,” Russo says.

“Absolutely.”

“You’ll have a lot to talk about before you leave the FAN, Mike. The fall will be good. Mike, the Giants are gonna have a good year.”

“Eli’s gotta play better.”

“And the offensive line.”

“The offensive line is terrible.”

See the most-read stories in Entertainment this hour »

‘30 for 30: Mike and the Mad Dog’

Where: ESPN

When: 5 p.m. Thursday