Sportscaster's Streak Bear-ly Matched

Raconteur, TV sportscaster, sports radio gabber, career igniter and now online entrepreneur. You name it, Chet Coppock has done it. 

Throughout his 63 years, though, the one constant in the most famous broadcast personality to come out of Northfield has been the Chicago Bears. He has an eternal home-opener attendance streak and a bevy of season tickets that grew out of special family connections to the team's hierarchy.

In September, Coppock celebrated the 60th anniversary since he attended his first Bears opener, having seen the team play at Wrigley Field before moving to Soldier Field in 1970.

“It was almost an obsession with the family," Coppock said, referring to his father Charles, an avid Bears fan who moved his brood to Northfield in 1949.

His 'small-town existence'

Coppock remembered that the village had only a few hundred residents in a semirural atmosphere at the time.

“We lived at Willow and Wagner,” he said. “I was the first baby baptized at Northfield Community Church.

"It was a very small-town existence. My graduation class at was 60 kids,” he recalled of his upbringing.

Charles Coppock was an entrepreneur in his own right--a “hustler” by his son’s definition. He developed a printing business in partnership with Luke Johnsos, a longtime assistant coach for George Halas, the team's late owner and legendary coach.

“Papa Bear,” whose sideline apparently was helping his associates and former players get started in business, floated the elder Coppock and Johnsos a loan to start the company. The only bad advice in the process was Halas turning thumbs down on Coppock’s inquiry on whether he should buy the Detroit Lions.

Cache of tickets

To boost his printing business, Coppock's father bought dozens of Bears season tickets. Eventually, he owned 176 upon his death in 1975. Chet inherited the cache of seats, but realized there were too many to maintain as a fledgling sportscaster for WISH-TV in Indianapolis at the time.

He winnowed down the seats to a “manageable 50” and in conjunction with Bears business manager Rudy Custer, sold or bartered the seats. “I [traded] four tickets on the 30-yard line for four sets of Encyclopedia Britannica,” he said.

Later on, when the Bears tacked on personal seat license (PSL) charge just to have access to tickets, Coppock bartered four PSL’s to a local BMW dealer for a gratis two-year lease on a car.

“My bill for all the PSL’s at one point was over $100,000,” Coppock said.

Among prominent Chicagoans who bought their tickets from Coppock were Bears quarterback Sid Luckman, bookseller Carl Kroch and former Bears coach Abe Gibron. Coppock has further cut his allotment to 20 tickets, which are now easier to distribute via e-mail and social media.

Undeterred by blizzard

Coppock also had a vocal tie-in with the Bears. He was Soldier Field’s public address announcer for seven years. In 1981, he was hired as a sportscaster at WMAQ-TV (Channel 5), which meant giving up his Bears gig to avoid a conflict of interest. 

Even during his time in Indianapolis, Coppock remained a loyal fan who attended each home game. But he can recall one harrowing time of doing the 360-mile drive for the final home game of the 1974 season, then consisting of 14 games.

“I was working six days a week, Monday-Saturday, at WISH-TV,” Coppock said. “There was a massive blizzard. I got in my car at 11:45 p.m. Saturday, and drove through the storm warnings. I was behind trucks. Somehow they didn’t close I-65. I got to Chicago at 20 minutes to 7 p.m. on Sunday and did the game.”

Coppock’s resume beyond the Bears has a little bit of everything. He worked as a go-fer at WFLD (now Fox-32) soon after it went on the air in 1966. He produced the Milwaukee Bucks network radio broadcasts in their championship season of 1971.

His highest profile in Chicago was as a WMAQ-TV sportscaster from 1981-83. For the next decade, he hosted sports talk programs on WLUP-AM (now 1000-AM ESPN) and the former WMAQ-AM.  

The broadcast personality was renowned for questions to his guests almost as long as their answers. Through much of the 1990s, he dabbled in cable TV sports for a Long Island company and later for SportsChannel, now Comcast SportsNet Chicago.

Sports talk 'Godfather'

Nowadays, he brands himself as “The Godfather of Sports Talk Radio” at his website, ChetCoppock.com. He has launched programming on both his website and at NorthToNorth.com, run by fellow prolific broadcast sports gum-flapper Mike North.

More recently, Coppock authored his first book, Fat Guys Shouldn’t Be Dancin’ at Halftime, a stream of consciousness from his Chicago sports memories. He has been host of the Heritage series of interviews with former Blackhawks players on that franchise’s website.

“I want to run it for four to five years, and do five to six shows a day,” Coppock said of his online site.

How does he want to be remembered?

“When I eventually kick,” Coppock said, “I don’t care whatever anybody thinks of my work, or where I screwed up. I always did my best to reach out and give people breaks in this industry.”

The likes of Dan McNeil, David Kaplan and Bruce Levine are among the names he has helped.

But Coppock also will be remembered for making a lot of Bears fans happy while being as faithful in his attendance at games as any football-lovin’ bloke alive.

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