Michael Felger had to scramble in reverse on the radio, and it was laugh-out-loud funny
When Milton Williams signed with the Patriots, Michael Felger had to do a 180 on the radio in real time
I cannot tell you why my sports-radio-addled brain chooses to remember this. I suppose it’s because, for a long time, it held the top spot as the funniest thing I’d heard from Michael Felger and Tony Massarotti in the 16 years they have been hosting their afternoon drive program on 98.5 The Sports Hub.
It happened, oh, maybe five years ago. Maybe longer. The topic of discussion was the Patriots’ chances of ever hosting a Super Bowl at Gillette Stadium.
Felger, as he often is — mostly authentically but sometimes performatively — was a skeptic. One reason, in this case, was the obvious lack of lodging for the tens of thousands of visitors a Super Bowl would draw. Route 1 isn’t exactly lined with JW Marriotts.
Felger’s way of delivering the point was downright hilarious.
“Where are they going to put everyone?” he said, annoyed at the impossible logistics. “Ferns on Route 1?”
Ferns, as folks who zipped along Route 1 North the last few decades likely noticed, was a … let’s say outdated motel in Saugus. Seedy also works.
It was demolished back in 2015, but I still chuckle at the recollection whenever driving past where it once stood. Would have been a good place to put Roger Goodell and friends for the week.
I mention this for two reasons. A great line deserves to be remembered (and hey, so does Ferns). And it’s no longer atop the list of moments from that show to have made me laugh.
Perhaps you saw on Monday’s program, in the midst of the NFL’s “tampering period” that doubles as a free agent frenzy.
The Patriots had agreed to terms with several free agents, but missed out on coveted wide receiver Chris Godwin (who returned to the Buccaneers) and appeared to be whiffing on Eagles defensive tackle and Super Bowl stalwart Milton Williams, who was reported to be heading to the Panthers.
It wasn’t exactly a disappointing day for the Patriots to that point, but it did feel incomplete. That was enough for Felger to do what he and Massarotti do best: Tell you why this thing you’re excited about as a fan is or will be a failure.
“Have you extended yourself? No,” said Felger in a rant/monologue about the apparent failure to attract coveted players to Foxborough. In part, Felger claimed, because of an unwillingness to pay the going rate for stars.
“Have you convinced someone to come here who has no reason to be here? Categorically, not. So, like, you haven’t really done anything other than improve the team at the margins,” he continued. “And in the aggregate, when you add up all the money, you’re going to be able to say, ‘They spent.’ ”
That’s when he was interrupted with news that would hilariously halt his narrative.
“I guess we have breaking news,” he said, before producer James Stewart announced that the Patriots had agreed to terms with Williams, swiping a player regarded as potentially the best available in free agency out from under the Panthers.
“So that is one,” said Felger. “So that’s going to stop me in my tracks. Because that is one guy that they targeted at the top of the market, and it does feel like they’ve beaten out some other teams.
“He was earmarked for the Panthers earlier in the day, and apparently the Pats got in there at the end. So that one does feel different to me.
“That is a big splash signing, and if that’s what you wanted them to do today, then you have to give them credit for it.”
It was laugh-out-loud funny and a pure delight to have to listen to Felger scramble to reverse course in real time, because those situations when he is stopped in his tracks are so rare.
He and Massarotti have the this-thing-you-like-stinks-and-here’s-why approach perfected. They mix in just enough calculated nuance — brushing off a tough Celtics loss when you expect them to tell you the sky is crashing to Earth, for instance — to keep the show from becoming totally predictable.
As frustrating as their approach can be to the more reasonable among us, a decade and a half of uninterrupted massive ratings success in afternoon drive is unassailable confirmation that it resonates with listeners.
The station’s midday “Zolak and Bertrand” show actually set the negative tone on Monday, mockingly calling the Patriots the “kings of interest” approximately 15 minutes into the tampering period, after Godwin returned to Tampa Bay. It was the Felger and Mazz formula in full effect, a few hours early.
For Patriots fans that anticipated their negativity, it was annoying to endure right up until that glorious moment when Williams committed to the Patriots and Felger’s argument turned into a Ferns-like pile of rubble.
Gut punch
The sudden death of prolific author John Feinstein on Thursday at age 69 was terribly sad news. His unsparing, illuminating, and wholly fair “A Season on the Brink” is on the very short list of the best sports books ever — just imagine having that kind of access to someone like Bobby Knight and knowing exactly what to do with it. But my favorite book of his is another he wrote on college basketball — “A Season Inside,” which takes us into the lives of the key figures of the 1987-88 college basketball season, including Steve Kerr, David Robinson, and Danny Manning. Feinstein surely had more compelling books in him. What a loss . . . It would be doing viewers a favor if NBC Sports Boston stopped putting its pregame and postgame team on a TD Garden concourse in front of a crowd of camera-mugging fans before and after the Celtics’ biggest games. It’s distracting, with more of a chaotic vibe than a fun one. Just stay in the studio.
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