Tag Archives: mike francesa

Football

2010 NFC West Preview, by Mike Francesa

With the NFL season about to kickoff, Scratchbomb has asked a few luminaries to give us their takes on the upcoming football season. Next up, WFAN drive-time personality Mike Francesa.

francesa.jpgUgh, I gotta do my ovah/undahs again? Jeez. Okay. Hey Bill, Frank, Tommy, whatevah my producah’s name is, how come you didn’t tell me soonah about the NFL season startin? That’s how we’re runnin things now, huh? Okay.

/drums fingers for 30 seconds

Alright, let’s look at the NFC West. You sure I gotta do the NFC West? I couldn’t do the AFC East? I wanted to tweak the Jets and Rex Ryan some more. Okay, fine, whatevah.

Boy, dis is a rough division. Not a lotta contendahs in dis one. Don’t think a Supah Bowl champ is gonna come outta this division. If you ask me, these are four teams that aren’t very good at football, if you get what I’m sayin. Where to begin?

/exhales loudly for four minutes

I guess by default you gotta pick the 49ers. A good team. Not a great team, but a good team. Can’t trust Alex Smith, but they’re the best of a bad field.

Not in love with Arizona. Not anymore. Not a lot to love with this team. They had Kurt Warner, he’s gone. Leinart, goodbye. What a losah. What a uttah disgrace. Not the same team that went to the Supah Bowl. Lotta changes. Lotta turnovah. Lotta people used to be here who aren’t here now, and vice versa, and also the opposite.

/reads aloud from Daily News for 15 minutes

Seahawks, oh brothah. There’s anothah team with nothin. You got Pete Carroll and the whole USC mess followin him up there. You got Matt Hasselbeck, he’s a disastah. And you got, what else? I don’t even know. I guess I could look up the rostah, or have my intern read it to me, but I’m too busy tryin to keep that kid from eating my egg roll.

And the Rams? Good Lawd, they are terrible. Awful. Awwwful. Horrible. Almost as bad as the Mets, who I will now abuse for 20 straight minutes apropos of nothing. You know who this team could use? Brandon Inge. Or maybe Bronson Arroyo. Very undahrated playahs. I like them both. I like them both a lot. A huge amount. A metric ton of like.

Alright, let’s go to the phones. We got Tony in Bayside.

Thanks for taking my call, Mike. I gotta say, the 5 hours you’re on the air every week are the happiest minutes of my life.

Go on.

You were wondering about the Seahwaks, and while I agree they’re not gonna be good this year, they did add Leon Washington, who might be…

Where’d you get that from, the innernets?

I looked it up on the Seahawks’ Web site. It’s just that, you couldn’t think of any players Seattle acquired, and I wanted to help. Please don’t hang up on me, Mike. I’ll die without you!

How dare you give me information from a reputable sawce?! Get outta my sight?

/handwave

Alright, coming up we got Phil Simms in studio. I’ll ask him questions about the NFL playoff picture and answer them before he has a chance to speak.

Baseball

Next Up on The FAN: Questions of Great Thelogical Import

In the wake of another disappointing weekend for the Mets (during which they could conceivably have swept the Cardinals but only managed one win, and that one a 20-inning purgatorial nightmare), the WFAN airwaves were rife with distraught fans declaring their disgust. But while most callers employed the harshest language radio would allow, one Mike Francesa listener had loftier thoughts on her mind.

Yes, you heard right. Kathy thinks the Mets need Jesus. And not Jesus as in “Jesus Christ, can’t this team do anything right?!” No, she seems to honestly believe the Mets, as a team, need to accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. Why? “That team is horrible!” Because as we all know, only righteous, pious teams win championships. Just look at the Mets’ last World Series-winning team. The 1986 Mets were a collection of clean-living souls who only played baseball in between their seminary studies and mission trips to Guatemala.

Let’s give Kathy the benefit of the doubt. It’s possible she was being hyperbolic or facetious, or perhaps she’s really young and has no context on which to draw (ie, the hundreds of championship teams whose off-the-field behavior indicated they had very little use for religion). Or maybe she was actually being sincere and thinks born again-ing your team will lead to success on the field. She’s entitled to that opinion (just as I am entitled to skewer it). Regardless, Francesa’s response was more wackadoo than the question.

Granted, this is a touchy subject. If you’re behind the mic, you don’t want be overly dismissive and offend anyone, but you also don’t want to open the floodgates to start a religious discussion on a sports talk show. Basically, you want this line of inquiry to disappear ASAP. If this was me, I’d be tempted to say, “Why should Jesus give a shit about a sports team?” But the safer response would be, “I’m not touching this with a ten foot pole.”

Francesa, who has a few decades’ worth of experience on the radio, clearly wants to go this route. But in so doing, he lets loose a brief, bizarre critique of this woman’s statement. To wit: Why would Jesus choose the Mets over somebody else?

That’s a fair assessment, Mike. Clearly the heavens have not turned their attention the Mets, unless it’s some malevolent trickster god like Loki.

Baseball

The Stellar Research of New York’s Number 1

fran1.jpgWelcome bu-HACK to The Mike Francesa Program, New York’s Number 1, coming to you live from Port St. Lucie, where spring training has begin. The period called spring training is upon us. The time of year generally referred to by most baseball fans as spring training is here. Something has started to occur down here in Florida, and that thing I’m referring to is spring training. I’m at Mets camp, where apparently they’re preparing for the upcoming season, rather than throwing in the towel by Opening Day as I suggested. My first guest on the program is a fifth starter candidate and a promising young pitcher, Jon Niese.

niese.jpgThanks for having me on the show, Mike.

fran1.jpgLet me ask you a question, Jon. Didn’t you have some sort of injury or something last year?

niese.jpgUm, yeah, I did. Tore a hamstring pretty bad. Couldn’t you have just looked that up before the interview?

fran1.jpgWhere would I have looked it up, the internet? I don’t trust those calculator things. They got viruses and cookies in ’em. Now, let me ask you something else: Are you a lefty or a righty?

niese.jpgI’m a lefty. Any other questions you want to ask me that could’ve been answered by the back of my baseball card?

fran1.jpgYes, as a matter of fact. With Damon and Matsui gone, do you think the Yankee lineup will be as explosive as it was last year? How do you think Granderson’s gonna do in his first year in pinstripes?

niese.jpgTo be honest, I haven’t given the Yankees’ question marks much thought, since they won the World Series last year and I don’t play for them. I’ve been concentrating on breaking into the starting rotation and recovering from a horrific injury.

fran1.jpgDon’t get testy with me, young man. This is how it works, son. I’m the number one host on the Mets’ flagship radio station, and I’m here in Port St. Lucie visiting your team. Of course I have to talk about the Yankees!

niese.jpgYou do that. I gotta go stand over here for a while
/leaves

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