Recently, Max Kellerman revealed that he was in line to replace Chris “Mad Dog” Russo alongside Mike Francesa on WFAN. Francesa says that isn’t true.
“Yeah, that was the plan. I was supposed to go over and work with Mike,” Kellerman said in a recent podcast episode with Bill Simmons.
However, Mike Francesa has refuted that claim, saying Simmons was actually his first choice to partner with following Russo’s high-profile exit.
“It’s completely untrue. There’s not a word of truth to that,” Francesa said of Kellerman’s statements. “I can tell you a little dark secret that (Mark) Chernoff knew: I was never hiring anybody. That’s the fact.”
Despite his insistence that he wouldn’t partner with anyone other Mad Dog, Mike Francesa did go on to say he had one person at the top of his list.
“The first person I ever talked to — believe it or not — was Bill Simmons,” Francesa revealed. “I called Bill. I said ‘Bill, I got an idea.’ And he said, ‘I have no interest. It’s not what I want to do with my life. It’s not what I want to do. I appreciate it, but I don’t even want to discuss it.’
“So we never even discussed it. He was the first person I talked to,” continued Francesa. “He might not even remember that, but I do. Because I made the phone call. He said ‘I’m not interested, that’s not me,’ and it never went anywhere else.”
Francesa revealed that he met with Stephen A. Smith, as well as between five to seven other candidates before deciding to host the program by himself.
He shared that no one ever got a second interview, whether it was a lunch or brief meeting, adding that the reason he soured on Kellerman was that after he got dinner with the then-ESPN Radio host, “by the time I got home, it was already out that we had met. And that finished him. We never talked again.”
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