Weasel of the Week: Mike Francesa

He's baaaaaaaaaaaaaack!

"He", of course, being New York's #1 gasbag, Mike Francesa, who has ended his retirement after four months, and reportedly has bullied his way back on to WFAN's afternoon schedule, effective next week. Why? The three-person crew hired to fill the gaping hole in the schedule created by Francesa's departure at the end of last year----ex-SNY gasbag Chris Carlin, ex-NFL player Bart Scott (played with the Jets & Ravens, most recently was with CBS as well), and Maggie Gray----aren't pulling in the same kind of numbers that Francesa had, losing ground to ESPN Radio's afternoon drive fest, simulcast on the Yes network, and anchored by Yankee play-by-play voice Michael Kay.

The issue is that Francesa went over the heads of station management and made his sales pitch to the head of WFAN's corporate parent, and basically scammed his way back on the air.

WFAN morning host and CBS studio analyst Boomer Esiason slammed Francesa on his show today, and Kay has already weighed in. Dubbed the "Sports Pope" by media columnist Bob Raissman of the NY Daily News, Francesa has proven time and again that he's more hot air than substance. NY Post media nanny Phil Mushnick, as well as Raissman, has ripped Francesa over the years for lying on the air about certain topics, when in fact he has contradicted himself on several topics, just to make himself look good, and perpetuate the big lie that, supposedly, he's never wrong. Now, who does that sound like?

Kay, according to an article in the Post, had sympathy for the Carlin/Scott/Gray team, noting that Carlin, who'd left SNY and a cushy radio gig calling Rutgers football for a gig in Philadelphia, left the city of brotherly love to return to New York. Carlin's former SNY series, Loud Mouths, hasn't been the same since he & Adam "Shoe" Schein, left (Schein is now at CBS Sports Network, which also simulcasts Esiason's show and employs Scott during NFL season), reducing the New York-centric series to being what it really is, a regional rip-off of ESPN's Pardon the Interruption, and I'd not be surprised if SNY offered Carlin a chance to return should WFAN, which is chopping his show in half, ultimately cut him and his team loose.

I've read the horror stories spun by Raissman and Mushnick, and I've seen some of Francesa's now-defunct simulcasts when they were on Yes. He's as phony as a four dollar bill, and, yet, like a certain other gasbag from the Big Apple, has enough people snowblind to reality to think that he is all that and a bag of chips. No, he's not. Today, Mike Francesa is, and, in reality, always has been, a Weasel. Enjoy the weasel ears and tail, Mike. You deserve them.