MIKE ADDRESSES THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM

Mike Francesa addressed the Neil Best report that Mike and the Mad Dog could soon be history:

"Dog got it in his lap on Monday. I made sure I was near a TV at 1 o clock when he came on. I thought he handled it well. Everything he said, as far as the relationship was true You know we’ve been together 19 years. That’s a long time and a very visible position for 19 years, so you know, we’ve kind of carried on this relationship in a very public way, so that when we’ve had fights, they’ve been made public, when we’ve had battles, they’ve been made public and there haven’t been many in recent years. The last bad one before this was probably 8 years ago, I think it was in 2000, we had a bad one. And I’d say in the last 19 years, we’ve probably had 4 or 5 bad ones. This one was pretty bad. And I’d say he gave you the timetable, I would say we did have a meeting in May, that we had decided that maybe we had carried it on the air and that we were not being very professional so we apologized. He apologized. I apologized. I thought I had handled myself terribly. I apologized for that. I thought I had carried it on the air, was very unprofessional, which was something I don’t ever try to be. When you do this this long, you are going to have problems. I think we’ve patched it up on the air. Have we patched it up off the air? Not really. Not to any real extent. I’ll give you an example, we haven’t spoken this week, so that should give you an indication, of everything that’s going on, we haven’t spoke this week. So I think that’s a pretty good indication of where we are right now. Umm, about everything else and all the conjecture, I haven’t spoken to anybody about that, I haven’t spoken to anybody about the story. I’ve had requests about it this week. I would just say this, in 20 years of being here, I came to the station in ‘87, I’ve been with Dog since ‘89, I have never, not once, discussed my contractual relationship with FAN publicly. Not on the air, not in the newspapers. I’ve never negotiated publicly. I’ve never negotiated on the air, I’ve never negotiated in the newspapers. I’ve had a great relationship with the station. I haven’t had any contract battle in 20 years. I’ve had 4 or 5 contracts. They’ve all been handled very, very well. I’ve never had a bad day with them in 20 years, so I’ve never discussed that and I never will. So I mean I have no interest in discussing my contractual situation and where it is or would I do that publicly. And as far as the Mike and the Mad Dog program and where everybody thinks it may be going or, I will say this, we have done 19 years together, which is a very long time. We’ve had a lot of different things happen in our lives, we’ve had 7 kids in recent years. You go through a lot of changes, a lot of things happen. A lot of things are said. You don’t know everything that’s going to happen day to day, life’s not that predictable. Nothing’s that predictable that you know there’s any certainty to what’s gonna happen day to day. I would say this, I think our relationship will never be a sole reason that we would ever part. I don’t think it would ever reach that level. I think we could always work well together. I think we’ve worked well together. I think even our most severe critic would say that we have produced something pretty special over the last 19 years. Pretty successful and pretty special, and I think it’s something that I’m proud of and I hope he’s proud of. Where it goes from here, I’m not sure. You know I think to be fair with the audience, I think we have reached a crossroads, I think we’re at a crossroad. I think this will play out over the summer and we’ll see what happens. I’m not going to sit here and say that something couldn’t change. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t. I don’t know that yet. So if it does, I will be very proud of everything we’ve accomplished here. If it doesn’t, we’ll be back and hopefully do 19 or 20 more years together. I don’t know. You know I don’t know how long is long enough. You know, you wait and see how it happens. Would I guarantee anything? No. Would I make any declarations today? No. Eventually all things have to pass. If we’re at the time, I’m not sure. We’ll see what happens. It’ll be an interesting summer. Next, Met Baseball."