Chet Coppock, 1949-2019

Chicago is one of my favorite cities. It's a great sports city. And it lost a legend last week.

Chet W, Coppock -- he was not born "Chester," and I can find no reference as to what the W stands for -- was born on April 30, 1948 in Chicago, and grew up in suburban Northfield, Illinois, where he was a graduate of the East Campus of New Trier High School. (The West Campus is in Winnetka.)

In 1966, he began his broadcasting career at that school's radio station, and got his 1st professional job with the NBA's Milwaukee Bucks. In his 1st season, the team's 3rd, 1970-71, he got to broadcast 2 of the Top 10 players in NBA history, veteran Oscar Robertson and rising star Lew Alcindor (who changed his name to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in 1972). On his 23rd birthday, April 30, 1971, the Bucks completed a 4-game sweep of the Baltimore Bullets, and won the NBA Championship. It remains the team's only one.

He served as sports director at WISH-Channel 8 in Indianapolis, then a CBS affiliate (now The CW), where future NBC star Jane Pauley was a co-anchor. He returned to Chicago, and hosted Sport Rap on WSNS-Channel 44, an independent station that is now all-Spanish. He then became a staff announcer at WFLD-Channel 32, then an independent station, now the city's Fox station.

In 1981, he was hired at the NBC affiliate in town, WMAQ-Channel 5, and was named sport director at the accompanying radio station, 670 on the AM dial. This led to Coppock On Sports, where he became a Midwest sportscasting legend. The show moved to WLUP, AM 1000, in 1988, where he also hosted pregame, halftime and postgame shows for the Chicago Bulls, about to start their Michael Jordan run of 6 NBA Championships in 8 years. Also on WLUP, he hosted The Mike Ditka Radio Show with the Bears' coach.

He later returned to WMAQ radio, and in 2006 moved to WLS, 890, to do pregame and postgame shows for Notre Dame football. In 2009, he began the Coppock On Sports blog and podcast. In 2013, he received what he must have considered the ultimate honor, for it was named after his idol, the man who had long broadcast Chicago's Cubs and Bears: The Chicago Sports Hall of Fame's Jack Brickhouse Lifetime Achievement Award.

He also raised money for Indiana Easter Seals and Indian March of Dimes. The latter was appropriate, since he greeted radio callers by saying, "Your dime, your dance floor." He was never confrontational on the air: Just about every interview guest would be called "my good friend." And no guest ever disputed this.

As Barry Rozner of the Chicago Daily Herald, which covers the suburbs, and co-hosted Final Word with him on Fox-32 on Sunday nights, put it, "He had a star-studded Rolodex and he used it every night." (Kids, a Rolodex was what we used at our offices before we had all our contacts on a spreadsheet.)

His books included Fat Guys Shouldn't Be Dancin' at Halftime, Chet Coppock: Laying It On the Line, If These Walls Could Talk: Stories from the Chicago Bears Sideline, Locker Room and Press Box (with Super Bowl XX-winning linebacker Otis Wilson), and Your Dime, My Dance Floor.

On April 6, 2019, on vacation on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, he was involved in a head-on collision, 14 miles away in Okatie. He was taken to Memorial University Medical Center in Savannah, Georgia -- probably the closest properly-equipped hospital -- but died from his injuries, last Wednesday, April 17. He left behind a son, Tyler, and a daughter, Lyndsey, and an ex-wife, Anna Marie Busalacchi. He has been buried at Maplewood Cemetery in Anderson, Indiana.

"Not everyone cared for his shtick," Rozner said. "That's OK, too. Chet didn't care if you loved or hated him. He only cared that you were interested."

Chicago sports got a lot less interesting with the loss of Chet Coppock.

UPDATE: He was buried at Maplewood Cemetery in Anderson, Indiana.