Reporter asks Texas coach to 'unfold onion' in long-winded question

LA veterans may remember Biff Elliott, a radio guy in the 1980s who would ask long winded questions. We were in a postgame scrum with Pat Riley after the Lakers game and Biff asked a question that went on and on. "Why this, if that, blah, blah blah." Riley simply answered "yes" and went to the next question and everyone busted up.

 

Folks, we have an update:

 

Clown.

 

I was almost prepared to have a bit of sympathy.

And now, nah.

 

After reading the Q&A with him, clearly obvious he's a fanboi trying to be nice and positive and sunny rainbow unicorn HornBoy.

Good to see he feels blessed to be in the room with Sark.

 

everyone has asked stupid questions. and full disclosure, I hate "talk about."

but my favorite moment to watch is after the inane, weird or longwinded question is asked (or "talk about" is deployed), and even as the clown questioner's (me, occasionally) cooler peers are rolling their eyes and sighing and giggling and -- more than anything -- trying to separate themselves from the clownishness (and, yes, I've been that idiot, too), the interviewee responds with an insightful, colorful or revealing answer....and all the cool kids are suddenly scribbling down every word of the answer. or, taping it, for the story in which it will soon appear prominently.

the point: sometimes the idiotic question evokes a great answer. sometimes the smartest question gets you nothing but cool points. you never know.

 

With my new (outside of sports) job, dumb questions elici the best replies. But I go in telling my subjects they are smarter than me and they need to guide me through a lot of things. LOL

 

can't tell you how often I've 'pulled a Columbo.' asking someone to explain -- making THEM the expert -- has gotten me far more great answers than the times I've tried to show how smart I am

 

I've switched from journalism to PR for an engineering college, and I do sometimes think it has helped with my interviewing. When you know something about a subject area (sports), I think it's really hard to suppress your ego, and to not "ask questions" that kind of tip off that you know what you're talking about. Whereas with engineering, I know almost nothing, and it's easier in a way to just ask, "Hey, what the fuck does this even mean?" (Plus, then the person answering is the one who gets to be long-winded and to appear smart, if they wish.)

 

At one of my stops, I was a one-man department with four high school football teams to cover. (It helped that we didn’t have a Saturday edition.) I inherited the services of the features reporter who knew next to nothing about football and freely admitted as much. But someone had given her two questions to ask the coach after each game and that was the formula she stuck to:

Were there any injuries?
How did the offensive line do?

And you know, it at least produced passable copy.

 

Did I get laid off so you could take my job?