Bruce Wolf

Bruce Wolf (born September 11, 1953) is a veteran Chicago broadcaster and sports anchor who has been on both TV and radio for more than 20 years.

He formerly hosted a politics-themed talk show weekday mornings on WLS (AM) radio in Chicago.

He also fills in as a sportscaster on WMAQ-TV in Chicago and works part-time as a divorce attorney.

The son of Ira Wolf, a hardware store owner in Chicago's Lincoln Park neighborhood, Wolf grew up in Skokie, Illinois.

He attended Nile’s East High School.

Wolf first started working full-time for Lerner Newspapers from 1972 to 1981 and also was doing play-by-play broadcasts on two small radio stations.

He caught a break when WXRT radio's owner Dan Lee walked into Wolf's father's hardware store and asked if Wolf would be interested in a vacant sportscasting position.

Wolf, who also is an attorney, earned a degree in journalism at Northwestern University in 1975 and also earned a J.D. degree from Chicago-Kent College of Law.

At age 24, he decided to attend law school while working full-time as a newspaper reporter and also was doing play-by-play broadcasts on two small radio stations.

Wolf began hosting Athletes' Feats on WXRT from 1976 until 1982 (the show then was hosted by Chicago Tribune columnist Bob Verdi from 1982 until the end of 2000).

He also did morning sportscasts at WXRT.

In 1982 he joined WLUP-FM Radio, also doing sportscasts.

While working for WLUP, Wolf created a character named "Chet Chitchat", a blended caricature of Chicago sportscasters Chet Coppock and Chuck Swirsky, his predecessor at WLUP, which became a weekly feature on the station's morning program.

In 1987, Wolf joined WFLD FOX News Chicago, where he became the morning sports anchor.

While working for FOX he received three local Emmy awards.

"But I'd been on radio and when I heard about Fox opening (August 1987), I sent the news director a tape I made. They were looking for a local guy, someone with a Chicago flavor, but with a different take on sports."

From around 1990 until around 1991, Wolf co-hosted 9:30, an informal talk show on WFLD-TV airing right after the station's 9 p.m. newscast.

The program fizzled, however.

While hosting the show, Wolf created controversy one night when he displayed a photograph of the Cuban revolutionary and leader Fidel Castro and joked, "They never did assassinate that guy, did they?"

"I had never been on TV before, other than in a crowd shot during a Cubs game," Wolf told the Chicago Tribune in 1991.

"I was just being a smart aleck, but I guess I triggered-maybe that's a bad choice of verb-some bad feelings," Wolf told the Chicago Tribune in September 1991.

While at WFLD, Wolf famously once decided not to bother with a traditional sports report in June 1993 during the station's 9 p.m. newscast, since few sports fans would be watching an evening newscast during a Chicago Bulls playoff game.

As a result, Wolf delivered his June 2, 1993 sports report from the living room of his north suburban home, surrounded by his wife and five children, who chimed in on cue.

In September 1993, WFLD hired Chicago Bears defensive tackle Steve McMichael as a guest analysis on a new half-hour sports highlights show that Wolf was hosting.

McMichael previously had worked as an analyst at WMAQ-TV in Chicago, where he once had brandished a knife on the set.

"I'm scared witless," Wolf joked to the Chicago Sun-Times about his pairing with McMichael.

In September 1994, Wolf was demoted from being the 9 p.m. sports anchor at WFLD but remained at the station as a morning sports anchor, telling a local newspaper that he was "the highest-paid fourth-string sportscaster in UHF history."

Also, referring to his own sarcastic bent and WFLD's parent network Fox Broadcasting Company's coup that year in picking up National Football League games, Wolf joked to the Sun-Times: "Well, maybe the NFL doesn't have room for a smirk."

In that same interview, Wolf told the Sun-Times of his new predicament: "As (former Chicago Bears coach) Mike Ditka once said: "This too shall pass."

In 2003, Wolf publicly criticized a sportscasting rival at WMAQ-TV for wearing a Chicago Bears logo shirt while covering Bears' pre-season games, suggesting that the move undermined the rival's credibility.

A year later, however, Wolf himself wore a Chicago Cubs hat and jacket, along with WFLD colleague Tamron Hall, while covering the Cubs' opening day festivities.

The first incident, in September 2005, involved WFLD suspending Wolf for three days after an awkward on-air appearance involving then-WGCI-FM radio personality "Crazy Howard" McGee, who apparently while appearing on WFLD had made a crude, below-the-waist gesture.

Wolf turned around and denigrated the gesture during his sports segment, leading to an off-camera incident with a producer.

After 18 years working for WFLD-TV, Wolf was terminated in February 2006.

The reasons for his firing were never made entirely clear, but local media provided two explanations.

One was that Wolf's contract was too rich for the station.

The other reason involved a pair of incidents that had occurred over the previous six months.

The second incident, at the Chicago Auto Show in February 2006, involving a taped off-beat segment (which never aired) involving Wolf interviewing a man standing outside of the Auto Show in front of his own car.

Wolf apparently asked if he could "key" the car, and the man dared him to do so.

In an interview with the Chicago Sun-Times, Wolf labeled his Cubs-related action was "hypocrisy," and combined a line from the movie Caddyshack with a quotation from the 17th-century French writer François de La Rochefoucauld in elaborating further: "But as La Rochefoucauld said: 'Hypocrisy is the homage that vice pays to virtue.' So I've got that going for me, which is nice."