Former Cardinals coach Ken Whisenhunt ‘duped’ by imposter
Oct 10, 2013, 9:21 PM | Updated: 9:39 pm
Former NFL head coach Tony Dungy went on a national radio show earlier this week to report that he’d been contacted by the University of Southern California about their vacant football head coaching position.
Dungy was contacted, but not by USC. The university announced that an imposter had contacted not only Dungy, but former USC star and NFL head coach Jack Del Rio.
Now we know who the imposter is.
He’s 32-year-old Ken Tarr, who told Deadspin that he’s been contacting a lot of people, pretending to be a hiring consultant for some of the most primo jobs in sports.
Among Tarr’s victims is former Arizona Cardinals head coach Ken Whisenhunt, who is now the offensive coordinator for the San Diego Chargers. Tarr contacted the coach to gauge his interest in the head coaching job at the University of Texas — which is still held by Mack Brown.
“Sure, I think it’s a great football program,” Whisenhunt responded to the question of whether or not he had “passion for Longhorn football” in a video posted on Deadspin.
That doesn’t at all constitute interest in the job on Whisenhunt’s part. We think it’s more a case of Whisenhunt being gracious to a total stranger on a phone call.
We’re wondering how anyone could have even partially fallen for any of these half-baked overtures. Tarr mumbles through all of the calls, uses improper terminology and even mispronounces names of key figures of the organizations he’s pretending to work with.
DeLoss Doss? Seriously? It’s Dodds, Ken.
Golden State Warriors head coach Mark Jackson, Hawaii head football coach Norm Chow and Oregon State head coach Mike Riley are among the other targets of Tarr’s phone conversations.
There’s really nothing clever about any bit of this “prank” by Tarr. He just seems like a delusional dude with way too much time on his hands trying to stir controversy and push the envelope.
We’re more impressed when somebody gets through to CNN during a crisis and drops a “Baba Booey” on an unsuspecting host. Immature? Sure. But at least it’s a little funny.
This is all just sad.
