Brandon Tierney walked into Mike Francesa’s office at WFAN expecting a quick conversation. He walked out after what he described as a “10 out of 10” on the ugliness scale.
During an appearance on the Awful Announcing Podcast, Tierney confirmed the infamous screaming match with Francesa that leaked to the media roughly a decade ago. The blowup happened after Tierney gave an interview in which he said he wasn’t “chasing Mike Francesa’s throne,” a comment Francesa apparently took the wrong way.
“100% true,” Tierney said when asked about the incident. “I’ll actually tell you the whole story.”
Tierney had just returned from a golf trip in Myrtle Beach when the New York Post published a Q&A where he addressed Francesa’s job. The headline framed it as Tierney not chasing Francesa’s throne at WFAN, though Tierney insists his actual comments were respectful.
“The reason why I said I’m not chasing his throne anymore, I was at a point in my career where up to that point everything that I was doing was based on got to get to FAN, got to get to afternoon drive,” Tierney explained. “And I thought it was a little bit of an unhealthy chase where I was maturing, I was growing, I was doing well, and I was saying, ‘All right, listen. You can’t control that they hire you. Control what you can control. Do your best shows.'”
He walked into the station that day to prepare for his afternoon show with Tiki Barber. Francesa’s office was visible from the entrance, and as Tierney walked in, Francesa called him over.
“I’m like, ‘Oh, that’s nice. Mike wants to talk,'” Tierney recalled. “That didn’t really happen much. So I was actually kind of excited. And I walk in, and he just unleashes on me, man. He unleashed on me.”
Francesa went from zero to 100 immediately, according to Tierney. F-bombs started flying. Francesa grabbed a stack of papers — ratings, apparently — and started yelling about what it’s like to be number one.
“Now, don’t give a sh*t who you are. You’re not going to talk to me like that,” Tierney said. “That’s just not going to happen. If you think that I messed up, I’m going to give you the latitude to express yourself. But if you think that I’m going to be on the other end of this tirade for another 30 seconds, you are sorely mistaken.”
Tierney fired back. The argument spilled out of Francesa’s office and into the newsroom, which was packed at the time. Somehow, both men ended up in program director Eric Spitz’s office, still screaming at each other.
“We are just still screaming at each other, and it’s just not ending,” Tierney said. “F-bomb, f-bomb, f-bomb, f-bomb. I’m like, ‘What in the world is going on?’ I walked into a volcano.”
Spitz eventually diffused the situation. Tierney walked out in a rage, immediately calling his agent and wife to recount what had happened. Someone in the newsroom leaked it to the media, and when reporters eventually reached out, Tierney tried to quiet the story rather than add fuel to it.
“I’m not going to get into it. I’m not going to add fuel to the fire,” Tierney said. “I didn’t want that to happen. I didn’t make that happen. And I’m not going to make it worse. That’s always kind of my mindset, like damage control. I’m from the school where it’s okay to get loud. It’s okay to disagree. I’m not gonna go running to the papers.”
The incident made things uncomfortable around the station for a while. Tierney said there weren’t many words between him and Francesa after the blowup. When Francesa did his final show before his first retirement, Tierney made sure to get a picture with him and posted it on social media with a positive message.
“That’s how I operate. But I was not going to sit there at that level of disrespect,” Tierney said. “I don’t care who you are. That’s it. It just can’t happen.”
Years later, Francesa invited Tierney and others to play golf. At one point, Francesa nearly killed Tierney with an errant shot that hit him in the head.
“If that would have hit me in the temple or the face, I would have been airlifted off the green,” Tierney said. “It was terrifying. Harrowing is the word that I’ll use.”
After the round, Francesa held court at the country club for two hours, telling stories about the early days of sports radio, working with Jimmy the Greek and Brent Musburger at CBS, and the early years with Chris Russo.
“Got great respect for Mike. I really do,” Tierney said. “It was a situation that, I mean, on a scale of 1 to 10 in terms of ugliness, it was a 10… It was as loud and as violent, and I just didn’t give a sh*t who saw it. I didn’t care who heard it. It was just tunnel vision with Mike.”
Tierney hasn’t been shy about discussing Francesa on his new YouTube show, “BT Unleashed.” The two have maintained a cordial relationship despite the blowup, though Tierney made clear he wasn’t going to back down when confronted that day at WFAN.
“We’re grown men, big boys,” Tierney said. “You move on.”
About Sam Neumann
Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.