|
  |
Radio host may not be all he claims
Don't believe everything you hear. So says Dan Sileo just a week into his new morning host job at WDAE-1250 AM. The former Buccaneer-turned-radio personality arrived at the Jacor-owned station Sept. 23 with some baggage he would have rather left behind. According to his former employer and the San Francisco Chronicle, Sileo had some credibility problems when he was an afternoon radio host at San Francisco's KTCT-1050 AM during the last year.
A former University of Miami football player, Sileo was so well-known for embellishing his brief pro career on the air, stated the Chronicle, that the intro to his own show poked fun of him: "Three years in the NFL! All right. ... Three months. ... All right. ... Three downs!"
Susan Slusser, the Chronicle's sports media writer, documented some of Sileo's exaggerations:
* In San Francisco, Sileo often referred on-air to his playing days with the Dallas Cowboys. But according to the team, Sileo went to training camp in 1989 and was released before the season began.
* According to the newspaper, Sileo said that he played for the Detroit Lions and was on the field when Joe Montana played his final game for the San Francisco 49ers in 1992. KTCT program director Lee Hammer also told The Tampa Tribune on Thursday that Sileo said he started eight games for the Lions. A station employee also told him that Sileo claimed a photograph of a Lions player on the sports department wall was of himself. According to the Lions, however, Sileo never played for them. Rather they allocated his contractual rights to the Orlando Thunder of the World League.
* The Chronicle stated that Sileo told a sportscaster that on his first play in the NFL, he sacked Montana. Only trouble is, Sileo played just 10 games with the Bucs as a sub in 1987 and never recorded a sack. Reached by The Tampa Tribune on Wednesday, Sileo stuck by his Montana story, insisting it was the third game of that season he sacked the future Hall of Famer. However, the Bucs list him with two quarterback pressures and 14 tackles in his short career here. And the Bucs-49ers game was the seventh game of the season.
The list goes on. So what if he told a caller he was an All-American at Miami when he really was an honorable mention? After all Sileo has been through, listeners should be sympathetic to his memory lapses. He told Slusser, as stated in the Chronicle on March 22, 1997, that his discrepancies were the result of a two-year bout with meningitis brought on by steroid use. It wasn't until Slusser questioned his stories, however, that Sileo revealed his struggle with the disease during a phone call to her home.
Sileo said this week he had an eight-year battle with steroids and a near-death meningitis experience, but insisted that he had never spoken to Slusser. That was Wednesday. On Thursday, he said he had spoken to her once. She recalled at least five conversations with him during his employment at KTCT. Sileo's problems are of little surprise to Hammer. When a talent shuffle demoted Sileo from morning host to reporter in August, Hammer said credibility concerns about him grew.
For instance, Sileo was sent to a college news conference but returned without any tape for broadcast. When Hammer asked Sileo what was said there, he replied with quotes the colleges" sports information directors later claimed were false and added Sileo never was present at the news conference. Sileo said Thursday he was not at the news conference because of contract problems with the station and added he was "very unhappy ... in that stupid reporting job."
Nevertheless, Sileo insists he said all along that he was with the Cowboys and Lions only in training camp. As for Slusser's stories, Sileo claims she had an ax to grind because she didn't like his station. As for Hammer, he was retaliating because of the terms under which Sileo left KTCT. As for his reported embellishments, Sileo said it's all nonsense. "I never talk about myself [on the air]," he said. "It's caller radio. ... If I've made stuff up, why would I come back to a place and state where people know what I've done? That's absolutely ridiculous."
Lisa Magenheimer The Tampa Tribune
| |
|