Over the years working in New York City, Christopher “Mad Dog” Russo has been present at several press conferences with key figures in New York sports. Being within the No. 1 media market in the world and hosting afternoon radio with Mike Francesa, Russo was willing to ask difficult questions to team personnel and would sometimes be reprimanded and/or simply ignored. Nonetheless, he always maintained his courage and confidence in these situations and recalled some of his more memorable moments while appearing Thursday afternoon on the Dan Patrick Show.
The prompt to discuss these incidents followed discussion about the NBA Playoffs, including the rivalry between the New York Knicks and Philadelphia 76ers that will continue with Game 6 on Thursday night. Russo began by remembering how New York Knicks head coach Pat Riley was participating in a press conference after the team’s narrow Game 7 loss to the Indiana Pacers in the 1995 Eastern Conference Semifinals. With speculation that Riley was going to be leaving the organization after four years as its head coach, Russo decided to broach the topic in the season-ending press conference.
“I asked him, ‘Pat, is this it? Are you done?’ You know me – I love to ask those questions in those press conferences in those days – open up my big, fat mouth,” Russo said. “But I asked him that and he didn’t give me an answer…. I felt so bad for the poor guy because we all knew that he was leaving and he was only after four years and they had not won a championship yet.”
Russo remembered another moment at a press conference with a New York head coach when Bill Parcells decided to leave the New England Patriots to coach the New York Jets. Attending a press conference on Long Island, he remembers Parcells calling in and being put on speakerphone in a large auditorium, thus presenting audio difficulties. Even though he was about 100 yards away, Russo asked Parcells if what he was doing was fair to the Patriots when he was under contract with the team.
“He said, ‘Who is that? Who is that?,’ and he got mad,” Russo recollected. “So I went down to the speakerphone on the [stage] there, [and] I said, ‘Bill, can you hear me now for crying out loud!”
Patrick responded to Russo’s answer by reminiscing on his years working in New York and how he had also attended press conferences featuring Riley and Parcells. Within his remarks, Patrick said that he was once “dressed down by Parcells in one of his press conferences,” to which Russo stated that it was “a badge of honor.”
“Yes, because it’ll humble you,” Patrick said. “You’ve got to be willing to ask a tough question, but be willing with whatever repercussions are going to happen, and I remember Parcells saying, ‘How many games have you coached?,’ and I said, ‘Uh, none,’ and he goes, ‘Exactly.’”
