Here’s a dilemma: How do you describe Chet Coppock without insulting him?
Wait! No problem! Chet’ll take you off the hook himself. He confides a secret little dream of his and it says all you need.
That’s why you’ll look long and hard to find a woman who even tolerates Coppock and his show. Listen for just ten minutes and you know it’s a boys’ club. Steve Dahl and Garry Meier, hosts of the show that precedes Coppock on Sports, joke on air that it’s really a “homo club,” just another example of the latent homosexuality pervasive in groups of grown men who linger in the male-only world of sports. But irreverent humor and pedestrian psychology aside, women know immediately the Chet thing isn’t for them.
“Dickhead” is the big word around here today. Chet, while writing “readers”–little blurbs of information he can use to fill time, kept at his side like a security blanket during the show–sometimes pushes himself away from the typewriter, stretches, rubs his eyes, and says, for no apparent reason, “George, you dickhead!”
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Today George’s special task is to set up an interview with Steve McMichael, the Bears’ star defensive lineman, who is having preseason contract difficulties with team management. First McMichael must be tracked down–he may be at his Texas saloon–then it must be determined if he is rational enough not to pepper the airwaves with expletives. “Mongo McMichael,” Chet says, “is a tough interview.”
At times like this, Chet becomes worried. “Get ahold of Jeff Torborg,” he shouts.
That done, McNeil punches out Don Zimmer’s home phone number again. This time Zim’s ready to talk, but he can’t come on live tonight, he’s busy. He agrees instead to be taped right now.
