Boomer Esiason supports Craig Carton returning to WFAN

For nearly two decades, Boomer Esiason has held a coveted spot as the morning sports talk host on WFAN in New York.

Midway through that run, Esiason’s show suffered a significant disruption when his co-host, Craig Carton, was arrested on fraud charges related to gambling. Esiason hosted the show alone for a few months before Gregg Giannotti joined as a permanent cohost in early 2018.

Carton returned to WFAN in 2020 after being released early from prison, hosting afternoons with Evan Roberts. The second marriage was brief, as Carton left again in the summer of 2023 to host a daily television show on FS1.

Now that the wisecracking host is once again back on the market after the Fox Sports show Breakfast Ball was canceled this past summer, Esiason expects his former co-host to return to the station for a third run.

And Esiason even has a prediction for where Carton might land.

“If they want to put him back on the radio and he wants to come back, he’s going to come back because he’s just too talented not to,” Esiason recently told Barrett Media. “I wouldn’t be surprised if someday he’s back on WFAN somewhere. It has to be a place where he has to have the biggest impact. So that would be in mornings or afternoons, it’s not middays.”

A potential Carton return looms over WFAN to the degree that midday host Sal Licata even sent a warning shot to Carton that the former host could not take his job.

Currently, Tiki Barber is on afternoons alongside Roberts. The partnership between Esiason and Giannotti has been highly successful in the morning.

That is likely why Carton launched his own podcast with the Fox-owned Red Seat Ventures after leaving FS1 rather than leaping directly back home to WFAN.

When Breakfast Ball ended earlier this year, The Athletic’s Andrew Marchand reported that Carton’s return to the station was “not out of the question.”

At this point, Esiason may not even have any inside information or a strong opinion on the matter. To predict a Carton return to WFAN is seemingly to see the writing on the wall.