Maybe Next Time Chris Russo Will Get Excited About Something
Imus warmly introduced his buddy Chris “Mad Dog” Russo today by comparing him to radio greats Howard Stern, Rush Limbaugh, and Sean Hannity, a kindness Russo had not anticipated.
“That is beautiful!” he bellowed. “That is a tremendous compliment!”
Then, expecting a little praise in return, Imus beckoned Russo, the host of Mad Dog Unleashed on Sirius XM, to look into his ears at his way cool new earphones.
“It has my name on it, and my little cowboy hat,” he said, childlike. “Francesa doesn’t have these, and you don’t have these.”
But Russo was too distracted his surroundings to care much about Imus’s new gadget. “Can I say hi to Bernard?” he asked. “And Louie! Louie, baby!”
Once he regained focus, Russo and Imus settled in for a brief, but spirited, discussion of last night’s GoDaddy.com Bowl game between Middle Tennessee and Miami of Ohio, whose coach was fired earlier in the season for beating up his wife.
Imus had caught the interim coach’s pre-game speech to his team, and played it for Russo, who was as impressed as everybody else by the guy’s intensity and fervor as he told his players, “We’re the underdogs, again! Once again! You’re disrespected, and you’ve got to prove yourselves…all four quarters, fellas!”
As if Russo wasn’t excitable enough this morning, the Miami coach’s oration really got him going. “Go get ‘em!” he yelled, then attempted a Vince Lombardi imitation. “What the hell is going on around here??”
In other football news, the New York Jets will play the Indianapolis Colts in the NFL playoffs tomorrow, and Russo predicted they’ll win, and asked Imus to lay off their coach Rex Ryan, or as Imus calls him “that loudmouth, toe-sucking loser.”
“He’s done a good job,” Russo said, and pointed to Jets road victories against New England and Pittsburgh as examples. Though he noted, “the Jets are making a lot of noise for a six-seed, so let’s see them win a football game.”
Besides the Jets, Russo likes all the road teams to win this weekend, but he’s been a bit distracted lately by his son’s basketball career to really focus on anything else. After failing to make the 5th grade travel team last year, Russo’s son not only made the team this year, but made the A-team. “You know me—I’m a nutcase with this,” he said. “I would give up a Giants World Championship for him to have made that 6th grade travel team, and I got both baby!”
What’s more, Russo’s brother-in-law had placed a bet for him in Las Vegas last March for the San Francisco Giants to win the World Series with 18-1 odds. He wouldn’t divulge how much money he made on the deal, but giggled uncontrollably when Imus suggested any amount would be helpful, given the relative obscurity in which Russo broadcasts on satellite radio.
Turning serious for a minute, Russo congratulated Sirius XM on hiring back Howard Stern, and on jacking the stock price up to a whopping $1.70, but he lamented, for maybe the hundredth time, that it’s more difficult to do a show on satellite because more content is required. “You’ve really got to empty the tank everyday,” he said.
Eliciting, of course, no sympathy from the I-Man. “Shut up,” he said, with love. “You’ve got one of the great jobs on Earth, and you’re whining about it?”
Yes.
-Julie Kanfer
Mad Dog Russo 
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