Legendary New York sports radio host Mike Francesa had Bill Simmons on his show Wednesday afternoon and broke some major news. Francesa is breaking his longtime embargo on collaborations with ESPN and participating in a 30 for 30 documentary about his fabled Mike and the Mad Dog radio show.
Simmons, who started the 30 for 30 documentaries at ESPN, sounded crushed when he heard that the documentary would happen without him. “Are you trying to hurt me?” Simmons asked, only half-kidding.
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Both Simmons and Francesa share a distaste for ESPN these days, and they got into some entertaining Deflategate talk. Both Simmons and Francesa were in agreement that the controversy was overblown, and in response to the NFL’s failure to handle Spygate properly.
“Goodell botched Spygate and there was a perception he was in Robert Kraft’s pocket. That really affected this whole thing. Once the Deflategate thing happened, which was misreported, it was really a sting operation,” Simmons said. He also reiterated he believes that there’s an NFL paranoia about the Patriots’ cheating habits, which Francesa threw cold water on.
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“They cheat. But they’re also very good at it,” Francesa said. “This one was silly, but this one was paying for the sins of what should’ve been taken care of when they actually did something wrong.”
Simmons also found a way to say some positive things about ESPN, crediting them for allowing him to do a lot of creative things.
“I’m most proud of Grantland. We built a site from scratch, found a ton of quality writers, and built something that started to resonate. Then the 30 for 30s.”
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