Fox Sports Live vs. Mike Francesa is the Media Feud You've All Been Waiting For

In the last couple years we’ve seen plenty of ESPN on ESPN crime, mostly from the mouth or fingers of Bill Simmons. Fox Sports 1 is still in its infancy as a network, but appears to have its first intra-company feud in the form of Mike Francesa versus Fox Sports Live hosts Jay Onrait and Dan O’Toole.

Francesa, whose radio show is simulcast on Fox Sport 1 (or Fox Sports 2) assuming it isn’t preempted for something else, has complained continually about the way the network’s handled his show over the last year. This week he decided to have some fun at the expense of Onrait and O’Toole, surmising “nobody knows who they are.”

The Canadian hosts returned serve Thursday night with some funny swipes at Mike in the form of a promo for his show. Onrait mentioned how often Francesa’s show is preempted and even offered up some self-deprecating humor, too, admitting he wasn’t sure if Fox Sport 2 was an actual channel or not.

In truth, the whole thing is pretty funny from both sides. Onrait’s razor sharp wit vs. Francesa’s papal pomposity makes for a good fight. There’s an air of Andy Kaufman/Jerry ‘The King’ Lawler scripting in all of this, with each side playing along to an extent, although I tend to doubt that was Mike’s original intent.

The bottom line is any promotion for Fox Sports 1 is good promotion at this point in the network’s life cycle, from the network standpoint. Hell, we’re writing a piece of sports blog #content about it.

Bigger picture, as hinted in the clip, the way Fox Sports 1 is going to make inroads vs. ESPN or penetrate the crowded cable sports landscape is through live sports programming such as the Champions League or upcoming Women’s World Cup compared to radio simulcasts and late-night highlight shows.