Former USC offensive coordinator Norm Chow made an appearance on a Los Angeles radio station recently, talking for ten minutes about a broad range of topics.

Notably, he was asked about his departure from USC and his views about his successors.  It was a benign interview --- except to gossipy Daily News USC beat reporter Scott Wolf.  Wolf either personally heard the interview or heard it from someone else (hearsay) and posted the following on his blog:

Former USC offensive coordinator Norm Chow was interviewed on 570-AM today. Here's a couple quotes:

"(Pete Carroll) wanted to get things done a certain way and it worked out well for everybody. You know, it's just too bad because I think they probably have the talent to maybe be playing for that fourth national championship in a month.''

On offensive coordinator Lane Kiffin and assistant coach Steve Sarkisian:

"I know (UCLA defensve coordinator) DeWayne Walker may be better than both of those guys.''

Juicy smack talk from Chow about Kiffin and Sarkisian, isn't it?

I just so happened to hear about the interview and was curious to hear Chow's assessment of Vince Young, Jeff Fisher and many other things including his stay at USC so I found the audio and listened.  Turns out he was badly misquoted.

Here's a link to the page where you can download the entire ten minute interview and what follows below is the transcript (context!) of the controversial segment.  If you listen to the entire interview Chow comes across as nothing but diplomatic.

Host: Coach, here back in Los Angeles, USC, a couple of your proteges in Lane Kiffin and Steve Sarkisian, taking over as offensive coordinators for the Trojans, they've uh, taken a lot of heat, and Joe mentioned especially after the UCLA game.  Any thoughts on those two guys and the job they've done since you left?

Chow: Nah, you know I don't get a chance to follow much, you know we're so busy doing what we're doing, um, you know LenDale keeps me informed of all that but I really don't, don't know.  You know I know DeWayne Walker maybe better than both of those guys and DeWayne's a heck of a football coach and that's why it wasn't too surprising when DeWayne did what he did with UCLA.

Scott Wolf, I doubt your veracity.

Chow's answer was completely different than presented in Wolf's blog.  It was so lacking in controversy that the two radio hosts at a UCLA-affiliated station skipped right over his supposedly controversial remark to ask about his reaction to Jim Harbaugh's hiring at Stanford.

Compounding the error, Mark Saxon of the Orange County Register reprinted as fact the Chow misquote.

Former USC offensive coordinator Norm Chow took a shot at the current play-calling tandem of Lane Kiffin and Steve Sarkisian in an appearance on a Southern California radio show Tuesday.

"I know DeWayne Walker may be better than both of those guys," Chow said on KLAC/570. "DeWayne Walker is a heck of a football coach, which is why I wasn't too surprised he did what he did at UCLA."

 Do your readers and the journalism profession a favor next time guys and get your facts straight.  Chow did not say what you wrote he said.  Wonder why athletes hate journalists?  This is why.  Download a copy of the interview next time and listen, it took me less than ten minutes of my time to hear the entire thing and realize there was no 'there' there.

What makes this interesting is that the Register had the exact same quote as Wolf.  They need to acknowledge to their readers that they pulled their quote from Wolf (or some other place that ran with Wolf's misquote) and didn't listen to the interview.  Wolf would do just as well to acknowledge his mischaracterization of the interview.

This was basically an episode of a children's game called 'telephone' played out in real life.

Anyone ever play that game 'telephone' as a kid?  Everyone would sit around in a circle, and one person would start by whispering a message into the ear of the person next to them.  That person would then whisper what they heard to the person next to them and this would continue until it finally reached the origin.  Usually, the message would have been jumbled into something new and bizarre by the time it reached the first person, causing everyone to laugh.

The moral of the game was that a message can be lost the further away from its source it is taken.  And in this case, a false message was taken directly to Kiffin, which could have caused further animosity between the two.  Kinda reckless, no?

Kiffin said Chow's words didn't bother him much.

"Obviously, I worked with the guy for four years and DeWayne for a year, but what someone says about you really has nothing to do with how you go about your work every day," Kiffin said.

Nice work, professional journalist men.

***
BONUS shenanigans from Wolf's Daily News colleague Tom Hoffarth

Hoffarth spent some time last week on a witch hunt of sorts trying to figure out the lone voter who placed USC receiver Dwayne Jarrett No. 1 in his or her Heisman ballot.  Hoffarth ends up thumbing USC play-by-play man Pete Arbogast thanks to some ridiculously speculative deductive reasoning that puts us no closer to the truth than before.

The back story here is that Hoffarth has been grinding his axe against Arbogast for a while now.  Petty, but whatever.

Here's where Hoffarth can't nail down the basics:

Kari Chisholm, who runs the website StiffArmTrophy.com that predicts each year who'll win the Heisman based on asking current voters, said in an email that she did not know who voted Jarrett first, "but I wouldn't be surprised if it was Matt Leinart, White or Mike Garrett."

We would be.

2) What about others with some sort of ties to USC.
Chisholm has a list of who she has been able to confirm as current Heisman voters. From her list, we'll extract these USC-ties names:

Artie Gigantino, Fox Sports Net, former USC assistant coach; Lynn Swann, formerly of ABC Sports, former USC receiver; Pat Haden, NBC Sports, former USC quarterback;.

Doubt it, doubt it and doubt it.

She?  She?!

Check out Kari's site.  I'm sure 'she' will appreciate you not taking the extra two seconds of research to figure out your 'she' is actually a he.

Whose crazy idea is this?
This site is published by Kari Chisholm at Mandate Media, Portland, Oregon. We do internet strategy and web development for political candidates, campaigns, and causes. © 2005.

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