Earlier in the week, Mike Francesa criticized staff working on his BetRivers podcast upon divulging incorrect information about the Big East Tournament championship. After explaining that St. John’s University had not yet won the tournament despite having the best regular-season record in the conference, he asked to restart recording and discovered that the show was being streamed live. Francesa apologized for his conduct and recognized that the clip would go viral, and the moment elicited further discussion from Toucher & Hardy on 98.5 The Sports Hub.
Morning show host Fred Toucher understands that Francesa was part of an award-winning radio duo on WFAN featuring Christopher “Mad Dog” Russo. In evaluating both of their careers since the end of the program in 2008, he feels that Russo is thriving at the moment appearing on ESPN and continuing to host his radio show on SiriusXM. As it pertains to Francesa, Toucher expounded that his career has had a rejuvenation because people were wondering how this was on the radio. Upon playing the beginning of the clip where Francesa asked who was correcting him through his headset, he talked about the broadcast setup and the impediments it could present.
“So this is a man at home,” Toucher said. “This is what happens – it’s very aggravating because now, everyone’s at home, and you can tell and it’s just lazy. You have to be in the room with the people. COVID, when we were in separate rooms, was not good. You have to be in the same room, and poor Mike Francesa, he doesn’t know who’s talking to him.”
As Toucher played more of the clip, he talked about how Francesa was going on and on and was fortunate not to have said anything worse. Despite him being unaware that he was streaming live on the internet, his insistence was something that Toucher pointed out and voiced that everyone gets. On top of that, he acknowledged that St. John’s still would have likely been a two seed in the NCAA Tournament bracket if the team was unable to defeat Creighton for the conference championship. In this situation, part of the wrongdoing, he explained, was on the part of those operating the program itself and that they should have informed Francesa that they were live.
“They’re unpaid morons,” Toucher said. “That’s what’s going on. The people that are producing Mike Francesa’s podcast are not young whip guys that are going to end up being the heads of NBC or something or the heads of Paramount Pictures. Yeah, these are idiots that are all at their own houses and everyone’s producing this garbage that no one’s listening to, so I understand him being frustrated.”
Toucher spoke about how Francesa was on WFAN and had producers who were invested in the product and made a lot of money working in New York City. At this moment though, he assumed that Francesa has producers working out of their bedrooms and can understand why that would be frustrating. Show contributor Jon Wallach assumed that the producers were “petrified” of Francesa, a sentiment with which Toucher did not agree.
“I don’t think they’re super angry at him,” Toucher said. “I think that they’re petrified that they’re going to piss him off, and they might have never met him. There’s a chance the guy that’s producing that show has never met him, and Francesa knows the only time anyone’s going to hear this is if it gets picked up by BackAftaThis or one of the parody sites and that we’re going to talk about it. It’s actually kind of sad because he was working with real stars.”
Later in the segment, Toucher revisited the partnership between Francesa and Russo and the success the duo enjoyed on the New York City airwaves. Within his discourse, he articulated that the pairing took place rather than having him solo in afternoons because he was boring alone. In fact, he stated that the reason CBS put him on the air initially was because of his esoteric information surrounding everything about college basketball.
“Whoever put them on the air together is a genius because they knew Francesa was an arrogant windbag with no charisma, so they put Mad Dog, who, by the way, is better without Francesa,” Toucher said. “You have to admit he’s better without Francesa. Now I understand that people who listen to that show, you listened to it when you were younger, and you’re rhapsodizing about something long ago, but Mad Dog’s better without Francesa dragging him down.”
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