Mike Francesa reflects on his infamous on-air nap: ‘The craziest week of my life’

Perhaps one of the most infamous moments of Mike Francesa’s illustrious sports radio career is when he fell asleep while on-air.

During an on-air interview with WFAN’s Sweeny Murti, the sports pope rested his eyes for what he said was 14 seconds. In typical Mike Francesa fashion, he denied it ever happening despite there being actual video evidence suggesting otherwise. It took Francesa nearly three years to admit what actually happened, but he told TMZ in 2017 that there was good reason for him falling asleep.

“I actually had my son in the hospital all night, the night before with an asthma attack, so I hadn’t been to sleep. So my wife had told me to take a nap that day before I did the show … would have been a smart idea. But that tape does follow me around. I think it was on national TV like four nights in a row.”

And while he could’ve put that incident to rest (no pun intended) his original denial has led to his on-air slumber following him around for the rest of his radio career. While Francesa has yet to hang up the microphone altogether, as he still produces a daily podcasted hosted by BetRivers, he’s at the point in his life — and career — where he can look both at the incident and laugh at it.

You couldn’t say the same for Mike Francesa a decade ago.

“The ones that I’ve heard the most about were the Giants-Giants, (Jason) Giambi, and did you fall asleep on-air with Sweeny?” Francesa said in response to some of the radio moments that have followed him during a recent appearance on the New York Mets-produced Meet at the Apple podcast. “That was the craziest week of my life. It was four shows before anyone even mentioned it — four shows later. No one at the station mentioned it to me. No one on my show mentioned it to me. All of a sudden, someone brings it up on the air, and I’m like, ‘Guys, what are they talking about?’

“…Letterman played it. Oh, more than once. I think two nights in a row. It got more attention; the only thing I think got more attention is when I went wild on the marathon. And they said I stopped the marathon, which I did. I mean, the marathon was going on until I went nuts about the fact that this marathon had no right going on. So, they wrote this big column, ‘The man who stooped the marathon,’ OK? And listen, I got the ball rolling to stop the marathon — there’s no question about it. It was the right thing to do. It was ridiculous. You had bodies; how are you going to have a marathon? It made no sense. But that a no-brainer to me, the marathon one.”

While it has nothing to do with his falling asleep on-air, Francesa giving himself praise for canceling the NYC Marathon due to Hurricane Sandy’s landfall is a perfect microcosm of who he was as a radio host and who he still is. At least he can poke fun at himself now.

Of course, there was the issue of him possibly falling asleep again two years later, but that didn’t catch fire as much as the first time.

“The sleep one, it’s funny, that followed me,” he said. “I had a guy at a Yankee game one night, who I was sitting there with Julio (his driver) and a couple of people, and he was about 10 rows behind me, and he harassed me about the sleep thing the whole game, like every pitch. And Julio said he was going to go back there. And I said, ‘Don’t you dare.’ And when I left, I said something to the guy and the whole audience laughed because it was funny. He just the whole game, and you know what? Hey, it’s part of the deal.”

[Meet at the Apple]