Chet Coppock, Godfather of Chicago Sports Radio, Remembered

Maybe flamboyant sportscaster was inspiration for Ron Burgundy. He definitely was a Chicago icon.

The last time I spoke to Chet Coppock was in January. I had posted yet another shameless plug for my 1908 Cubs historic novel—this time, for a change, on LinkedIn, which plays Burger King to Facebook’s McDonald’s. When you don’t have Random House on your side, you resort to Random Acts.

Chet had seen the LinkedIn item and messaged me that he wanted to buy a copy of The Run Don’t Count.

This reminded me that I had been meaning to call him, anyway.

``Herby, my good friend. How ‘ya doing, pal?’’

Chet called everybody his good friend. But he had always been kind to me. In 1984, when I had just moved onto the Sun-Times sports staff after working a variety of other writing and editing jobs there, I was covering a lot of baseball. Chet put me on his Coppock on Sports radio show and made me feel welcome. He was generous like that to a lot of people. For all the flamboyant stuff, he was a rock-solid good guy.

Later, I would go on to talk Bears, college football, whatever was on my plate. It was fun. And Chet’s show was virtually the only sports talk radio in town.

I told him I had been meaning to pick up his latest, Your Dime, My Dance Floor, and suggested we trade books. He liked that.

I asked him how the book was going. He had done one of his previous books on his own. This time he was working with Eckhartz Press, a small house in Chicago that seemed to be one step above a vanity publisher. When I had been looking into publishing a sportswriter memoir, I had talked to them—and their caveats had scared me off.

Chet not only was working with them. He was excited about it.

``They’re great guys,’’ he said. ``They take care of things. When they say they’re going to do something, they do it. And you know what, Herby. They’re loyal. They are really loyal. I love that about them.’’

We agreed to trade books. But some phone-tag intervened. And then I escaped to Florida—to dodge winter and work on the next book.

When I bumped into a mutual friend, Chicago Tribune writer Rick Kogan, last Wednesday night, we were talking about books. I told him about Chet’s experience and was reminded that I needed to call him.

The next morning, the news was everywhere. . . Chet Coppock had died of injuries sustained in a South Carolina car crash. He was 70.

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It’s easy to feel sad reading all of the tributes to Chet Coppock, a complicated Chicago sports broadcasting legend.

If you are unfamiliar with Chet, he was our very own Ron Burgundy. He even claimed Burgundy was patterned after him. And that would make sense.

``Your dime, your dance floor,’’ was how he welcomed callers to his radio show. . . . Or was it ``Your dime, my dance floor?’’ I never could keep that straight.

He had a huge heart and a vocabulary that was out there like a paisley tie on a checked shirt.

He was a strapping 6-foot-6, fair-haired, Bears-loving Chicago native who famously wore a fur coat and lots of jewelry. He had a treasure trove of cliches and he wasn’t afraid to use them.

Chet was briefly a sports anchor on WMAQ TV, Chicagos’s NBC station, but became the Godfather of Chicago sports radio when the TV gig ended in his firing. His sportscasts ran long and he sparred with management, which didn’t want him cutting into Johnny Carson.

Chet did it all. He was the P.A. announcer at Bears games. Did tons of commercial work with superstars like Walter Payton and Michael Jordan. He was the ring announcer at professional wrestling. He emcee’d countless sports events around town.

Once, when my cousin's son was a 6 year old obsessed with Hulk Hogan, Chet not only set us up with ringside seats. He got us backstage with Hogan and the rest of the wrestling cast.

``This is Herb. He works for the Sun-Times,'' Chet said, introducing me to Bobby Heenan, who had gone from ``Pretty Boy'' Bobby Heenan to Bobby ``the Brain'' Heenan.

``Where's your route?'' Heenan said in perfect deadpan.

The number of prominent Chicago sports broadcasters who credit Chet with launching their careers is boggling. Among them, David Kaplan, Bruce Levine, Dan McNeil, Cheryl Raye-Stout, Kenny McReynolds, Marc Silverman and Brian Hanley, to name a few. And longtime Chicago TV sportscaster Mark Giancreco, who got the TV job Coppock lost, said Chet was nothing but supportive at a time when Giancreco was green and learning the ropes.

Levine relayed this beautiful anecdote from future Chicago Hall of Fame broadcaster McReynolds, who was a 10 year old when he called the TV station where Coppock was working to ask about getting tickets to a roller derby that Chet was emceeing.

Chet answered the phone.

"I asked about the tickets and the voice on the phone said, 'You got them, kid,' " McReynolds said. "I told him I live in the projects and have no way to get to the Hammond Civic Center. Coppock said, 'I will pick you and your mom up and you can go with me.' My mother prayed that this young white man coming into the ghetto in a shiny car and wearing a fancy coat would go unharmed while picking us up. Chet picked me and her up and took us to the event. From that day on I had my heart set on becoming a broadcaster like Chet and a person who would give back to a stranger when I could like he did for me."

That was how Chet rolled.

And yet, Coppock lurked on the fringes for the last two or three decades, The last broadcasting gig he had was a pregame/postgame thing for Notre Dame football. It was awkward. He was neither a Notre Dame guy nor a college guy. Chet was a pro guy, especially a Bears guy.

Back in the day, when I would go on his show, his most popular question tended to be, ``Did so-and-so quit?’’

I never knew how to answer that. If a team is tracking for fifth place in September, or it’s losing 35-10 in the fourth quarter, how do you assess motivation? That was not a place you could productively go after a Notre Dame game.

For all the accolades that poured out after his death, he hadn’t had a significant radio opportunity in 25 years.

It’s ironic and yet, it isn’t. People loved the Chet Coppock of yore. The contemporary Chet Coppock was not a guy who would have played well on the modern air.

Where he was in his element was with old-timers—talking about old times. That’s why those books with old Bears were right in his wheelhouse. He had been devastated that his friend Doug Buffone had died just as their book was coming out. He would not ride the book circuit with Buffone. But he would do that in another book tour with Otis Wilson, another old linebacker.

His next book was going to be a collaboration with Dennis McKinnon, a wide receiver on the ’85 Bears. Chet believed Dennis had some hard-hitting observations that would make the book a success. (Chet said that more flamboyantly, of course. Now I wish I had been taking notes.)

Chet had no illusion that he was a great writer, but he also said the process was not difficult. The words flowed onto the page, same as they did into a microphone.

It occurred to me that while some writers put up with book appearances to promote their work, Chet wrote books so he could do the public appearances.

A few years ago, he swung by my house to give me some advice about a memoir idea I had. I tried to get him to come inside for coffee or one of his ubiquitous Diet Cokes, but he didn’t want to do that. So we sat in his luxurious car. He was so helpful and encouraging. And real. There was no carnival barker that day.

Now that he’s gone, two images linger. One is of Chet in his radio booth at old Comiskey Park, long arms and legs and microphone booms filling the space.

The other is of Chet working the old Chicago Stadium press box in his massive fur coat. Handing out vouchers for 23-ounce steaks at an old Michael Jordan’s restaurant. In the old days, sports radio shows showed their appreciation in ways like that. And Chet Coppock was very generous in ways like that.