With Colin Cowherd at 12-3 PM on Fox Sports Radio, What Happens With Rich Eisen?

As SI’s Richard Deitsch passed along, Cowherd’s simulcast will supplant Francesa, who is moving to FS2 for the short-term, on FS1. It’s reasonable to suspect the Pope may be out of Fox entirely on a relatively short time horizon.

Francesa and Fox have had an unhappy marriage almost from the get-go, which remained public, and this domino felt like a formality the moment it became apparent Cowherd was joining the network. Whether Francesa stays on FS2 for awhile or goes somewhere else remains to be seen, though it wouldn’t be surprising if he landed at MSG, which has been in the bidding before. (Mostly irrelevant sidenote: I’d selfishly way rather have Mike on FS2 sometimes than MSG all the time, because the latter isn’t included in my Chicago cable package. Keep me in your prayers.)

How Francesa gets along with CBS in the next year or two warrants watching. He hasn’t had especially nice things to say about them in recent months. Anything that could facilitate a reunion with Mad Dog is what everybody should be rooting the hardest for. That tandem remains sorely missed. We should start a White House petition.

It hasn’t been made clear to us exactly what is happening with Rich Eisen’s show, which currently occupies the national 12-3pm slot on Fox Sports radio. Possibilities include remaining on some or most terrestrial affiliates over Cowherd (unlikely in the long-term), moving to another time slot, or being off Fox Sports Radio — which are distributed by Premiere Networks — and remaining at the same time, while staying on Sirius, DirecTV, and Podcast One. A Fox Sports spokesman declined to comment.

[UPDATE: A spokeswoman for Premiere emailed to say that local affiliates will have the option to carry Eisen or Cowherd. She said Eisen’s show is currently carried by 150 stations, and that “these programs are available to any radio station in the sports format, not just FOX Sports Radio affiliates, so there’s plenty of room for multiple shows in the same timeslot to succeed.” My gut speculation is that Cowherd will dramatically affect the amount of cities Eisen is available in on terrestrial radio, but that’s not based on any inside info, and time will tell.]

Earlier today, Colin Cowherd spoke to THR, and apologized for his comments about Dominicans that caused ESPN to end their relationship a week early:

How you received Cowherd’s apology probably depended on how you felt about him in the first place. In any event, his radio show starts just in time for football season, and that’s a whole other gauntlet that is just around the corner.