The Trojan Times Latest Hit Job on UCLA: Recycle Stale Chow Story w/o Context

The Trojan Times LA Times UCLA beat reporter hack Chris Foster published in what it thinks a "big scoop" by noting that Norm Chow is going to receive $500,000.00 from UCLA while serving as Utah's OC this upcoming year. The relevant portion:

UCLA will be paying former offensive coordinator Norm Chow $500,000 while he is coaching at Utah this year, according to information obtained by The Times through a public-records request.

That was UCLA's buyout to entice Chow to resign in January after he was removed as offensive coordinator. He would have been reassigned to another position on staff had he not resigned.

As Utah's offensive coordinator, Chow has a two-year, $550,000 contract, making him the Utes' highest-paid assistant. UCLA's highest-paid assistants are defensive coordinator Joe Tresey and offensive coordinator Mike Johnson; each has a $250,000 base salary.

That reads like some kind of big scoop. Foster writes it up in a way so that it sets snarky headlines like this. The problem here is that the story is much ado about nothing. In fact the previous link in which Ted Miller comes up with his sensationalist headline, Miller himself concedes that this is "mostly old news". it is not even worth a front page post here on BN.

If Chris Foster or the UCLA hating editors in the Trojan Times had a shred of integrity, they would include the little detail about how UCLA itself benefited from $1 million payout from the Tennessee Titans, when he was fired by Jeff Fisher prior to his arrival at UCLA. In other words, given Chow's pedigree and track record, UCLA ended up getting a pretty good deal with Norm Chow.

It's unfortunate that Chow's time at UCLA did not work out. To his credit Chow has shown a lot of class since he left UCLA and we expect UCLA community to do the same.

It is too bad that Chris Fosters of the world can't help themselves from writing worthless stories without any context or relevant information, just to poison the well around UCLA Athletics. One would think with less than a month left with the start of Summer Training camp, Foster would actually do some real work - going over depth charts, doing interviews with key new comers, and discuss the offensive schemes of the new coordinators. Nope, all he has time for apparently is serve of skimpy 4-5 paragraphs hit jobs on UCLA football.  I suppose its par for the course for the Trojan Times.

GO BRUINS.