After comments he made about the involvement of Jordon Hudson in an interview with Bill Belichick on The Pivot made the rounds late last week, Channing Crowder is reversing course and apologizing.
On Tuesday’s episode of The Pivot, the former NFL linebacker seemingly took back his statements, in which he claimed that Hudson was heavily involved in the interview and even “choreographed the open.” Crowder also said that he had personally apologized to Belichick for the comments, before doing so again during Tuesday’s show.
“As I was talking about it on radio, you fall into the narratives,” Crowder said. “… I got caught up in the narrative, caught up in the questioning. When somebody sees that you have talked to a football God, now they want to ask the questions that they’ve had on their minds for years. And I would say that’s what I got caught up in.
“And I just want to tell Bill, Jordon, I apologize for any negativity it brought to you. Coach, we talked on the phone, I told you I respect you as much as I do anybody in this world. And what happened and the articles that came out was unrealistic and that’s the opposite of what I wanted to do for you and what I wanted to do for your relationship, coach. So that’s my bad and I wanted to put it out there as a man: my bad, coach.”
Co-host Fred Taylor commended Crowder on his accountability and agreed that his comments didn’t reflect the reality of the interview. Meanwhile, Ryan Clark outright disputed the notion that Jordon Hudson was heavily involved in the interview, while also shedding light on the show’s process.
“You see some of the things that was written and it was, ‘Jordon Hudson ran or choreographed The Pivot interview.’ That’s not the truth,” Clark said. “Bill reached out to me personally and we decided that we were going to ask about the book. But I asked, ‘hey coach, can we get into a little bit more?'”
Clark said that Belichick obliged because of their preexisting professional relationship stemming from their work together on Inside the NFL. The ex-Pittsburgh Steelers safety then revealed that he sat down with the couple for an hour-and-a-half before the interview actually took place and that Belichick and Hudson each expressed a desire for themselves and their relationship to be represented a certain way.
Clark also shared that Hudson even answered questions on camera, although that conversation didn’t make the final cut. Once the actual interview started, however, the ESPN analyst said that Hudson was hardly involved and even left in the middle of it being filmed.
“The conversations we had after [the interview], which was before the show was released, was, ‘what can we show about Bill speaking about her? And the rest of our interview,'” Clark said. “So for people to sit around and say that it was choreographed a certain way because Jordon was hovering, that’s not true. She was gone during that part.
“She was sitting when Bill and I were together. She actually interviewed while Bill and I were together. It was the three of us sitting around, having a conversation that was filmed that we just didn’t release. And so I think the narrative that people want to build around her and her control, wasn’t displayed during our interview.”
It’s unclear why The Pivot decided against releasing the portion of the interview involving Hudson, although his comments seem to indicate that the couple was granted a certain level of control over what could be used in the final cut. It’s also noteworthy that Clark revealed that he had conversations with the couple regarding their portrayal in the interview and now appears to be doing damage control the wake of Crowder’s comments.
As for those comments, Channing Crowder has every right to walk them back and it’s perfectly understandable if he got caught up in the moment joking around about the relationship with his WQAM co-host, Marc Hochman. But to be clear, it’s not on anyone else to make that assumption, as the idea that Jordon Hudson helped “choreograph” the interview only became a part of the discourse because that’s exactly what the show’s co-host said happened.