Resplendent in dark sunglasses, knobby soled driving shoes, and a hip-length raccoon coat, Chet Coppock, the man who fathered sports talk radio in Chicago, and who, like many a father, is both loved and dismissed, strides into the lobby of the East Bank Club.

Driving shoes? Just for comfort, because the condo where he, his wife and two children live is only minutes away. Sunglasses despite the dull, cloudy day are explained immediately.

"Don't be frightened," he says pulling down the shades to reveal rings of red and blue bruises around his eyes. "I had some work done."

The fur also has a purpose. We'll get to that later.

We are meeting for an interview over lunch. For a guy who had held at least eight broadcasting and emceeing jobs by the time he was 25, he is at an interesting intersection in his life -- unemployment.

Coppock recently parted ways with Sporting News Radio when the network asked him to take a pay cut.

If you don't recall hearing any of the five-plus years of his four-hour show on weekend nights, that's because the nearest Sporting News Radio outlet is tiny WJOB-AM 1230 in Hammond, Ind.

Coppock on his favorite athlete "For sheer physical talent, I'd go with Gale Sayers. He's not the No. 1 running back on my all-time list. I have him at No. 2 behind Jim Brown and ahead of Barry Sanders and Walter Payton. But when you play just 68 games and go into the Hall of Fame, that's magical. For talent combined with charisma, it's Bobby Hull. The young Bobby, before he started wearing cheap hairpieces, had more charisma than a young Redford or Newman. But then I also loved the meanness of Norm Van Lier, his competitive drive. He'd break a chair over your head to win a game."

In the fall, he'll go to Las Vegas to tape a sports betting show he has been involved in there, and he does some local radio ad spots -- American Taxi, Eagle Home Loans, Belgravia Builders, a couple of others. His Web site, www.chetcoppock.com, (featuring endorsements from fellow shrinking violets Dick Vitale and Bobby Knight) trolls for speaking engagements: "Coppock is the main-eventer, the ace-king combo. If your next banquet, street fight, wedding, baby shower, elks club meeting or field hockey reunion is in need of a stud speaker, contact CC at chetcoppock@gmail.com."

Talk with CC for a few minutes, and you know he wrote that.

We walk to a booth in the back. As we pass the bar, a very attractive, possibly thirty-something brunet turns and gives him a smile and a wave. He bends down (he's 6-foot-6) and says something in her ear. "Oh, Chet," she giggles, "you're so funny."

He is -- in a sort of swaggering, full-of-himself, wink-wink way that you may recognize even if you've never seen him.

"Did you see the movie 'Anchorman'?" I ask. "Was Will Ferrell doing you?"

"I think so," he says not kidding. "With me there's always been a flamboyancy. For a while, I was blond." He glances down at what looks to be a hibernating creature curled up on the seat next to him. "Look," he says, "57-year-old men don't wear fur coats, but it is an attention-grabber."

Coppock doesn't like being off the air. "I hate downtime, don't handle it well," he admits even though this is far from the first time he has been available. The most painful separation took place about 75 feet from where he now is starting to work through what would be about a pitcher and a quarter of Diet Coke (a chilled six-pack of which is a condition of a Coppock speech).

"We could walk over there, and I could show you the blood stains," he offers.

In 1980 he had joined Channel 5 television as a weekday sports anchor and did "Coppock on Sports" on WMAQ Radio. Three years later, the gig ended, taking him completely by surprise.

"I was here at the club working out, and my agent, Jeff Jacobs, came over to me and said -- I'll never forget it -- `Kid, you're out.'

Coppock on his role model "Jack Brickhouse was my dad's best friend. He never got me a job, but I used to sit in Jack's den and listen to him talk about the business. His passion made me think, `This is what I want to do.' I liked his work ethic. He'd do morning radio, then the `Leadoff Man' show and the ballgame followed by the `10th Inning.' Then the Brickhouse/Hubbard show, maybe wrestling from the Rainbo Arena and end with big bands at the Edgewater Beach Hotel. Maybe he'd even do a late-night TV spot with Morrie Mages."

During lunch, Coppock used the word `irony' several times. This was the first:

"Here's a great irony. Oct. 31 of 1983, George Halas dies. I get a call from Sid Luckman [Bears QB in the late '30s through the '40s] who is at the Old Man's bedside. We go on the air with it, lots of sound bites. Luckman comes down. I do a live interview. We are leaps and bounds ahead of the competition, beat them bloody. The station GM calls my agent and says if he had his way, he'd sign me to a 100-year contract. I got fired 13 days later.

"On the network television level, it's not a matter of watching your back, because you can't afford to turn your back."

Coppock grew up in the burbs -- Sunset Ridge Grammar School in Northfield, New Trier East High School in Winnetka.

"I was a frustrated pro wrestler," he says. "The other kids wanted to be Ernie Banks; I wanted to be Nature Boy Buddy Rogers. I'd stand in front of the mirror and flex my Olive Oyl [Popeye's skinny girlfriend] biceps."

Dream job

Many years later, as a ring announcer working for Vince McMahon's World Wrestling Federation, Coppock had so much fun he almost felt guilty getting paid.

"I'd be in front of 18,000 people introducing Hulk Hogan. For a big slice of Midwestern ham like me, that was a high."

He says he was "the brokest kid who ever attended New Trier. My dad went BK [meaning `broke' or maybe `bankrupt'] about 1959. Ironically it was because of Sid Luckman. He and my dad were both in the printing business then. Dad had the Brach Candy account for years, a license to print money. We belonged to country clubs, lived well. Then one day Luckman won the account away, and our life was never the same. Much later Sid and I became friends. I went to his funeral."

Coppock on wrestling a bear (The set-up: Around 30 years ago, Victor the Bear traveled the country, wrestling anyone so inclined. Victor was about Coppock's height, but -- at an estimated 500 or so pounds -- bulkier.) "I wrestled Victor the Bear three times. Lost all three. (One occasion was in 1975 during halftime of an Indiana Pacers game.) The secret is to make it look good to the crowd. (He puts out his hands trembling as if in fear). You try to shake hands with the bear, but he grabs you and throws you to the ground and sits on you. Then you just play to the crowd. You never seriously try to wrestle the bear even though he's so drugged up he barely can stand."

From New Trier, he entered Columbia College and, at 19, became a copyboy at WFLD-Ch. 32. Just three months later, he was a sportswriter and, shortly after turning 20, was on air. He left to promote boxing for a year, then produced Milwaukee Bucks broadcasts ("They won the NBA title on my 23rd birthday").

He came back to Chicago to host Sport Rap, a nightly TV talk show on WSNS TV, before eventually becoming a staff announcer with WFLD TV. While at WFLD he developed a friendship with a promoter, and that led Coppock into a role as the national TV voice of the Roller Derby. He wasn't yet 25.

"The first time I broadcast a derby in Madison Square Garden, I had a police escort," he says warming to the memory. "Roller derby fans are a little bit different, which is a politically correct way of saying they're nuts. They make wrestling fans look like Kissinger."

In roller derby, he explains, the white shirts are the "baby faces," the good guys, while the red shirts are the villains. He's comfortable wearing either shirt.

"When I was sports director at WISH-TV in Indianapolis, the Indy Star had a poll to choose the most popular and the most disliked sportscasters," he says, cheerily anticipating the payoff. "I won both!"

As he digs into a plate of chicken fingers, Coppock talks about how, in roller derby, wrestling and the media, heroes and villains are simply different sides of the same coin. "You play the audience, create the highs and the lows, create a sense of drama," he says.

'Intriguing and different'

Throughout his career, he has reinvented himself time after time. He says it's that time again.

"I won't go back to work until I find something intriguing and different. The show I have in mind would be guests and music and motion pictures and the wackiest contests possible. When I want to watch something heavy at night, I'll turn on [Chris] Matthews. But in the mornings, I flip on WGN-TV. Those four kids entertain me to beat the band. I'd put some of what they do into a radio show because they really get it -- let's just show up and have some fun.

"People could call in and pound on me. I have no problem playing the bad guy. It's maybe my greatest accomplishment."

Fans carp about his vehemently held sports opinions. Guests gripe that he squelches them when they try to disagree with him. Critics have said that in not having fan call-ins, he has been out of touch, and some have pulled his chain about introducing each and every guest as "my good friend."

Coppock says lots of his guests -- who have ranged from Steve Stone to Rev. Jesse Jackson -- are indeed friends and others, well, they get the big massage introduction anyway.

"I've had guests tell me they do my show just for the huge buildup I give them," he says.

"A lot of people probably think I should hook up with a circus and work the midway. I'd be the guy who stands in a tent with seven bowling pins and, if you knock down all seven, you get a prize, but of course you can't. They'd say that's me."

But it's a little harder than that to pin Coppock down. He has won journalism awards and wrestled a bear. He has emceed both tractor pulls and tributes to rabbis. He's in the Italian-American Sports Hall of Fame, and he's Czech. Years ago, he'd be the only white kid at the Regal Theater and other South Side music venues listening to Jackie Wilson, the Four Tops, a young Jimi Hendrix. If he hadn't gone into broadcasting, he'd have liked to be a music promoter ("The guy who opens the limo door for Mick") or a politician ("So help me Paddy Bauler (the name as published has been corrected in this text), it would be great to be an alderman").

He doesn't mind that all he is isn't seen or heard.

"People don't have to know that I like Broadway theater or that I love going over to the Century Mall to watch foreign films," he says.