By Vic Ketchman
Dec. 9, 2007

The following feature, part of a one-time PFW series entitled "Football's Flip Side” about sportswriters' offbeat experiences covering the NFL, was published in the Nov. 2, 1981, issue of Pro Football Weekly. It was written by Vic Ketchman, a former PFW Steelers correspondent who now works as the senior editor at Jaguars.com.

My most bizarre experience? I didn’t have to think twice.

Oh, sure, there was the time a couple of years ago, just before a playoff game against Miami, that I found myself delaying Chuck Noll from beginning practice.

To make a long story short: I was interviewing Joe Greene in the Steelers’ locker room and, as usually is the case, the discussion with Greene became more interesting and incisive with each passing minute.

All the while the conversation continued, my back was to the center of the Steelers’ locker room, where Noll was about to deliver a pre-practice message to his uniformed troops.

Upon noticing a half-dressed Greene engaged in discussion with a reporter, Noll sauntered over to Greene’s locker and, very graciously, said: “Excuse me. Are you about ready, Joe?”

Turning to see Noll and his uniformed players, I felt like the little boy with whom Greene does his Coke commercial. I didn’t wait for one of Joe’s shirts.

But I like this next one better, because it’s more offbeat or bizarre, and it involves other people who were made to look a little foolish also.

Here’s the story.

It was this past April — just before the NFL draft — and I was working on a pre-draft piece for my newspaper. I was interviewing one of the Steelers’ personnel people, who prefers to remain anonymous because his name has yet to be linked with the incident.

The conversation had just begun, and I was telling my interview that I had finally decided whom the Steelers would pick in the first round of the draft.

“Who?” my anonymous friend asked. “Hanford Dixon,” I replied proudly, as though I had come across some privileged information on Dixon or had actually seen him play. More accurately, I had carefully read Joel Buchsbaum’s PFW prospect ratings.

“Hanford Dixon?” the personnel person asked back. “The guy’s a midget,” he added.

Of course, the repartee was all in jest, designed to poke fun at my self-proclaimed abilities at handicapping football talent. The personnel person has since admitted he was also trying to throw me off Dixon, since the Southern Mississippi cornerback was one of the college prospects the Steelers were considering as their No. 1 pick.

Dixon has been listed as being anywhere from 5-9, 170, to 5-11, 182. He is said to be a bit smallish. But his talents far exceed his size.

I’ve never been listed. But for anyone who cares, Hanford and I are about the same size … on paper. As picks were being made, I and a group of reporters sat around a table discussing whom we thought the Steelers would choose. I jokingly made the observation that the guy I said the Steelers would pick, Dixon, had been called a “midget” by one of the Steelers’ personnel people. What chance did I have of being correct, I observed.

When it came time for the Steelers to pick, they chose Oklahoma DE Keith Gary. A few picks later, Cleveland made Dixon its choice.

Later that day, a Cleveland writer was in a telephone conversation with a Pittsburgh scribe, when the Pittsburgh guy mentioned to his Cleveland counterpart that one of the Steelers’ personnel people had referred to the Browns’ No. 1 pick as a midget.

The Cleveland writer used that information in his next-day story. Needless to say, the Browns were a bit incensed at what their “friends” in Pittsburgh had said about Dixon. Little did anyone in Cleveland know the comment was made totally in jest and couldn’t have been further from the truth as to how the Steelers regarded Dixon.

The Browns grumbled about the comment, and what had started as a harmless, flip remark snowballed into somewhat of a controversy, which wasn’t hard to believe considering the intensity with which Cleveland regards Pittsburgh.

In Pro Football Weekly’s Post-Draft Issue, Cleveland correspondent Ted Diadiun included this in his Browns draft review:

“Dixon bristled at the news that one of the Pittsburgh scouts jocularly referred to him as ‘that midget,’ upon learning that the Browns had picked him. ‘That just makes me look forward to playing them even more,’ ” Diadiun quotes Dixon as having said.

Of course, the Steeler scout had made his ill-fated remark days before the Browns drafted Dixon, at a time when the Steelers really did think Dixon could be their choice.

Apologies have followed the incident. But my embarrassment remains, for as reporters, our responsibility is to uncover rumors, not start them. The whole Dixon incident is a classic example of the dangers of secondhand information.

Hopefully, the matter has been straightened out.

But you can bet that the first time Dixon plays a prominent role in a game against the Steelers, it will be mentioned that he was once called a “midget” by a Steeler scout.

And I’ll remember how it all started … so harmlessly.

Editor's note: Dixon played nine seasons in the NFL, all with the Browns, and was selected to play in three Pro Bowls (1987-89). After he began the practice of barking at his defensive teammates as a motivational tactic while playing alongside fellow CB Frank Minnifield, Dixon was credited with having originated the name "Dawg Pound," a reference to an endzone section of rabid Browns fans at Cleveland home games.

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