Customer Reviews

Fat Guys Shouldn't Be Dancin' at Halftime: An Irreverent Romp Through Chicago Sports

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Longtime Chicago broadcaster and sports legend Chet Coppock lets it all hang out in his newest boo, Fat Guys Shouldn't Be Dancin' at Halftime. In this great book, he spares no one, especially not the McCaskeys or Crane Kenney, who have ruined two potentially great franchises through cronyism and poor decision-making. He also wishes that Chicago sports fans would get over their love affair with the 1985 Bears and stop comparing this generation's Bears to Ditka's wild and wooly bunch.

I'm a big Chicago sports fan so I had high hopes for this book. The problem is the writing style. It reads very much like 30-second interviews with Chet on 100 subjects. There's no doubt Chet has a lot to say about sports in Chicago past and present. But Chet is a sports commentator, not a writer. He really needs a writer to pull the stories out of him and flesh them out. Too many quick hits without enough depth. It should also be pointed out that Chet is currently looking for employment, and I really got the feeling that he didn't want to step too hard on any toes. Chet has a great book in him, but this is not it.

Chet Coppock is a self-promoting blowhard, so maybe he just plays one on TV/radio. The book contains about 80 to 100 of Chet's two-to-three-page rants on Chicago sports. One could say that this book lacks depth, but for those of us with a touch of ADD, this seemed just fine for my short attention span. There are a lot of off-the-wall opinions and a lot the name-dropping. And to put it in Coppockese, Chet is not going to make anyone forget Twain or Mailer or Vonnegut. But that said, this is a fun book to read. I couldn't put it down. And isn't that the bottom line?