Craig Carton Reveals the Return of the Legendary Pig Spanking & Wild Radio Firing Stories!

**Craig Carton** (0:00)
By the way, Bobby Valentine just checked in, wants to come on the show at 5 o'clock, so that'll be coming up a little bit later on. Bobby Burke from Outkicks is gonna join us in about 20 minutes. He's the guy that really broke the Ryan Clark getting fired story from ESPN while he was on the air. Which, I guess, a lot of people have stories about the craziest way they got fired from a gig.
We'll get to that a little bit later on next hour, so if you have one, I'd love to hear it. But that's next hour, but we'll talk to Bobby and I'll put about 20 minutes about that as well, because that is a tough way to find out that your services are no longer needed during a commercial break in the middle of a show that you're one of the main hosts on.

**Zach Gelb** (0:40)
And obviously, I don't enjoy anybody getting fired, and it's happened to all of us, but it is interesting to me. The fans on Twitter, and you talk about Twitter and all that, now Knicks fans are saying, well, Vince Goodwill had some bad takes about that participation trophy. How does he still get a paycheck?

**Craig Carton** (0:55)
Yeah, well, yeah, I'm with you on that, yes. There's a lot of people getting great joy out of him being fired. Unfortunately, he did become a race baiter later in his career, which I thought at the time was just a bad career decision. And it probably ultimately cost him his gig. And in the year in which they have the Super Bowl, and you're going to be one of the prime guys on the network, you know, leading up and through a Super Bowl, you know, it's hard to blame anybody, because I think you put yourself in harm's way repeatedly. But we'll get to that coming up in about 20 minutes. Let's take some calls here.
Tommy, how are you today, pal?

**SPEAKER_3** (1:33)
Hey, I'm doing great. How about yourself?

**Craig Carton** (1:35)
I'm doing just fantastic. Or as I like to say now, I'm trying to bring the word swell back into the American lexicon. I'm swell, swell.

**SPEAKER_3** (1:45)
That's awesome. Craig, I just wanted to say, years ago, unfortunately, I'm a Jets fan, but we went to the game with my buddy, great friend of mine, Jerry, and our two boys who went to the giant game of spanking the pigs. And you had a tremendous crowd around you. And me being a big mouth, I yelled out, hey, how about a picture with the kids?
Craig, you couldn't be more gracious.
We, you said, come on over here. You want to get a picture too? No, this is about the kids. Craig, I know you had your problems. I always had your back. Craig, I love you. I'm glad you're back on the air.

**Craig Carton** (2:20)
Thank you.

**SPEAKER_3** (2:20)
Thrilled to have you back.

**Craig Carton** (2:22)
And I'm going to tell you something. I really appreciate that. That's very kind. That's not why I told the story, but obviously, I'll take these calls all day.

**Zach Gelb** (2:28)
I was just going to say. I know what you did there.

**Craig Carton** (2:31)
Guess what?

**SPEAKER_3** (2:31)
I had a meeting.

**Craig Carton** (2:32)
I had a meeting today, Tommy, before the show with the head of sales here. And it looks like it's probably 90% done. We're bringing the pigs spanking back to MetLife Stadium for a Giants game this season. There has not been a pig spanking, an authentic one, in a decade now.
The pig spanking is coming back. And for those of you that don't know what it is, my buddy Tommy Perrone, who owns Brooklyn Roots in Bay Ridge, brings a whole pig, roast it, everybody and anybody that wants to come by, puts a glove on or not, spanks that pig's rump, and then gets a little pulled pork on the way out. And when we've done it, we've done it for four Giants games and two Jet games. Six and O.

**Zach Gelb** (3:26)
And it just shows you that you really don't believe in the Jets this year, because you said you're doing it for the Giants and not the Jets.

**Craig Carton** (3:30)
Well, there's a reason for that, and to answer that question there, Weisenheimer, is because we have the rights to Giants football games. So when the Giants play, we have better access to the parking lot to do events like that. The New York Jets, although I'm very close with them, the radio station does not have the rights to their games. So it's a Jet parking lot. There's a competitive radio station, I'm sure, that would not want FAN to have an official event in the parking lot. So that's why we really started it during Giants games. Just so you know the etymology of it.