MAD, MAD, MAD DOG WORLD
A decade after FAN split, Russo has the same zest for life, sports and listeners — and not a single regret Story by Andrew Marchand
AAAAAAAAAAND … the sun has not yet risen as Christopher “Mad Dog” Russo is at his ridiculous best. He is on a treadmill a little after 7 a.m., warming up for his workout while his mouth is motoring in mid-show form.
His verbal scattershots are all over the place, reviewing the previous evening’s “Monday Night Football” game, breaking down baseball scores and, every few minutes, giving one of his classic attaboys to somebody, anybody.
“That’s an excellent job on your part getting me in today,” Russo says to his trainer, Jason Baer, owner of the gym PTP in Russo’s hometown of New Canaan, Conn.
It has been a decade since Russo divorced his longtime on-air partner, Mike Francesa, leaving their legendary WFAN show, “Mike & the Mad Dog,” for a five-year, $15 million contract on satellite radio.
He does not wish for a do-over, but he knows his time with Francesa was his zenith, describing it in trademark understated fashion.
“I could cure cancer, but I’m never going to be able to surpass the ‘ Mike & the Mad Dog’ show,” Russo said.
After SiriusXM trimmed his salary in his second contract, he cut his hours and relinquished overseeing the channel that still bears his name, “Mad Dog Sports Radio.” But he has remained in the $3 million ballpark by adding a second gig with MLB Network.
Each weekday, he pilots his MLBN program, “High Heat,” from 1-2 p.m. to go along with doing 3-6 p.m. on SiriusXM’s “Mad Dog Unleashed.”
He is still going at it as hard as he can.
RUSSO is officially talking sports four hours per day, but when you spend dawn to dusk with him, have breakfast, lunch and dinner with him, it is hard to tell when he is actually off. His life is a cross between “The Truman Show” and “Big.”
He is 59, but he looks the same as he did when he was 49. His two jobs aren’t really for grown-ups, making him an ideal match.
His distinctive and strangely appealing voice — a cross between an air horn and a wounded animal — generates enough energy to light up Manhattan. He oddly, endearingly, still can’t properly pronounce many of the words he uses.
While Russo talks sports all day, it is pretty clear that Jeanne, his wife of 23 years, runs everything else. They live in a 6,000-square foot house in New Canaan. Chris drives a 2008 silver Lexus with 123,000 miles on it. Jeanne does not call him Mad Dog.
“Oh, God, no,” Jeanne said. “Never have I ever.”
They have four teenagers. Tim, 19, is in college at Tampa and is an aspiring basketball coach. Kiera, 17, is a giver. Colin, 16, is the most like dad, while Patrick, 13, is nicknamed “Smiley” by his football coaches.
The Mad Dog family has two actual dogs, a lab named Bo and a mini-doodle named Riley.
Jeanne isn’t really a sports-talk radio fan, per se, but will play producer sometimes. She instructs her husband as to when personal items are off the record. She also sometimes has to wave off a topic.
A few years ago at family dinners, the incessant discussion about Tim’s high school hoops team forced her to declare a moratorium on the subject.
DO YOU have the app?, Russo is asked over dinner, which he will finish with his molten chocolate cake dripped all over his Vineyard Vines sweater, forcing him to finish the meal in a white undershirt.
“Mike’s app?” Russo responds, referencing Francesa’s $8.99 per month venture. “No, I sure don’t. I’m curious about it.”
Russo is relentlessly curious about things he is interested in. Despite working in a cutting-edge medium like SiriusXM, modern technology is not one of the things that strikes Russo’s fancy.
He has an iPhone and does text, but doesn’t use an iPad or email.
When he first arrived at the network, he was in charge of programming on Mad Dog Radio, so coworkers tried to show him how to operate a computer.
“He is literally taking the mouse and waving it in the air,” said Steve Torre, Mad Dog Radio’s program director and a show host. “I’m like, ‘Chris, you have to sort of slide it here.’ He didn’t know what to do.”
RUSSO begins his TV and radio shows with his trademark, elongated “aaaaaaaaaand!” It’s like he is pulling a cord on a lawn mower, revving the engine.
On radio, instead of the classic “Mike & the Mad Dog” jingle — “Nothin’ can get by ’em, turn it on and try ’em” — it is Bruce Springsteen’s “Radio Nowhere,” a self-deprecating choice he made 10 years ago as a nod to the perception he had left for obscurity.
“He’s what a host should be,” said Fox Sports’ Colin Cowherd, who puts Russo atop his list of favorite listens. “Knowledgeable. Fun. Passionate. Plus, he can be theatrical at times to make a point.”
Growing up in Syosset, Long Island, Russo dreamed of being the next Marv Albert or Dick Enberg, but was destined to be the first Mad Dog.
In 1982, out of Rollins College, he landed a gig as a play-by-play man with the Double-A Jacksonville Suns. He was fired before he ever called a pitch. He thinks Suns’ management fretted over how he sounded.
Russo soon moved into sports talk, bouncing around Florida in the burgeoning genre, making less than $20,000. He was made for it.
As a kid, he was an only child, so his companion was sports. He was also a natural contrarian. Russo’s late father, Tony, loved the Yankees; Russo rooted for the San Francisco Giants.
“My whole life, it is the strangest thing, I’ve always gone the other way,” Russo said.
Russo also could recall the strangest minutiae, often accurately.
“How he remembers all this stuff is beyond me,” said Steve Cohen, SiriusXM’s senior vice president of programming.
He made it to New York in February 1987 with a $54,000-a-year salary at WMCA. In July of that year, WFAN began.
By September 1989, he breathed life into the Mike & Mad Dog iconic pairing. He was the likeable energy that made the show go from the start.
“He cares about the art of broadcasting and cares about sports more than most people in the profession,” his longtime agent, Sandy Montag, said.
That first Mike & the Mad Dog contract was for approximately $150,000 per year with bonuses.
TODAY, Mad Dog’s community off-air is much like it is on-air. He starts nearly every conversation with “How are you today?” And ends almost all of them, “That’s a good job out of you.” In between, it is a two-way sports talk conversation.
There is Roger at the Mobil station, where he picks up the papers for him and his mom, who lives nearby. Three times a week it is off to the gym to see his trainers, Jason and Scott, at PTP.
He has mastered the treadmill, but when he began using it 10 years ago, he would be talking so wildly that he sometimes fell off. He still is sometimes told to simmer down, as not everyone in the gym signed up for a special edition of “Mad Dog Unleashed.” Russo can bench his weight of 165 pounds.
After the workout, it is on to see Roberto and Alfredo from Connecticut Muffin. He orders a small blueberry muffin, cut with butter. That is, unless, they have pumpkin bread, his all-time favorite.
If Roger and Alfredo have it, they surely receive a “good job out of you.”
Russo freshens up at home before a 15-minute drive to the Darien train station, where he gives Rick, the ex-cop, his eight bucks for parking. He sits on the quiet car, where even with a companion, he said it is OK to talk.
“Whatever you see at 7 o’clock in the morning, you see at 3 in the afternoon, you see at 8 o’clock at night,” Eric Spitz, SiriusXM’s vice president of sports programming.
It translates on air, where his TV show is up 53 percent to 75,000 viewers and where he has created a caller community, like he had at FAN.
He has his regulars, like Hayden in Virginia, Ron in Michigan, Mike in Orange Country and, an old standby, Al from White Plains.
“I love talking to the fans,” Russo said.
AYEAR ago, Russo thought he and Francesa might be putting the band back together again. He hooked Francesa up with top SiriusXM executives and there was momentum after Russo and Francesa appeared at several events together, including one at Radio City Music Hall.
“I thought we were going in that direction,” Russo said.
He doesn’t know for sure, but thinks Francesa maybe didn’t want to follow him. He said a reunion is not happening now, maybe ever, and he is fine with it.
He is unsure if his relationship is frayed after he mildly criticized Francesa’s return to WFAN in May, following Francesa’s brief “retirement.” They have not communicated since. Francesa also did not return a message to talk about Russo for this story.
Nevertheless, there is a true a fondness for his former partner, but no regrets.
“I think it was good for me to leave,” Russo said. “I think it was good to let Mike sprout his wings. It really came at the perfect time. You would say it was a mistake if it didn’t work for me at Sirius. And you would say it was a mistake if Mike wasn’t successful, ratings-wise, without me. Now, if you want to look at the report card, 10 years after the fact, and no one is going to say, ‘Russo, what was he doing? What an idiot. What a terrible decision.’ Nobody can say that.”