With his red hair, perpetual smile and amiable disposition, Bill Wyatt isn’t one to get lost in the crowd. Standing in a community park adjacent to the Paramount Arts Centre in downtown Aurora, Wyatt is in his natural element, playing to the audience.
Outfitted in blue hospital scrubs and a straitjacket, “the type used on the criminally insane,” reads a promotional flier, Wyatt proves nothing can restrict his animated movements or manic actions. He is the ultimate trooper, despite the evident discomfort.
“This is not a happy feeling,” he says to a television cameraman. Suffering for your art is a noble tradition, though Wyatt is no doubt wondering if he hasn’t taken this notion to unfortunate extremes.
Nothing if not a showman, Wyatt has an innate sense for spectacle, and he has carried it off beautifully with the help of Danny Morlock, an Aurora magician.
The footage being recorded constitutes the core of “Bill Wyatt’s Sports Challenge,” a 30-minute program that’s an idiosyncratic look at sports, competition and marketing that is equal parts David Letterman and Walter Mitty.
The shoot marks the start of the show’s third season on WFXV, the Plano-based station whose UHF channel reaches an estimated 250,000 homes over cable and free television in the Fox Valley, according to company president Larry Nelson.
The “Saturday Night Live” sketch “Wayne’s World” and two subsequent films have turned Aurora into a pop culture symbol. Like Wayne and Garth, Wyatt got his start on Aurora’s cable-access programming. Now he means to go a step farther, enacting the persona of the quiet subversive who circumvents the self-seriousness of sports and TV from within.
On this casual, warm afternoon, Morlock has challenged Wyatt to see who is the quickest to escape from the straitjacket. Morlock is a gifted illusionist who has been practicing magic since he was a kid, and the situation doesn’t prove too significant a struggle. It takes him less than 100 seconds to break free.
Bill Wyatt is not as fortunate. After five or six minutes, he hasn’t made any noticeable progress. Sensing the futility, he finally requests some help. Wyatt’s torture is momentary, though no less humiliating, given the sizable crowd that has turned out.
“Looks like another loss for the Y (Wyatt’s nickname),” says Mike Leonardi, a longtime friend of Wyatt’s who delivers the acerbic commentary. The moment crystallizes the unpredictable nature and the peculiar, zany thrills of “Bill Wyatt’s Sports Challenge.”
Wyatt is not the detached observer who describes the action but an active participant. Like George Plimpton’s memorable first-person memoirs about professional sports (“Paper Lion,” “Open Net”), it’s fascinating to see the quirky, unconventional perspective the form yields. Like James Thurber’s interloper Walter Mitty, Bill Wyatt is an Everyman and outsized dreamer given the chance to steal the show.
“People are so used to seeing professional athletes on television, they’re not used to seeing everyday kinds of people struggling and not doing well, and I think people like to see that,” said the 33-year-old Wyatt, who is married and and the father of a baby daughter.
“I try to come off at first as being a really good athlete, to get people charged up and thinking, `Yeah, I can beat him at something.’ The first year I lost every challenge. Some of the things I’ve been asked to do have never been done before.”
The program’s format is pretty straightforward. Wyatt recruits sponsors, who choose a sport in which to challenge him. The program is broken into three segments: the sports challenge, an interview with the sponsor and National Football League and Big 10 football predictions made by Wyatt and his erstwhile partner, Harry Childress, a 63-year-old Auroran who goes by the Runyonesque nickname “Harry the Hat.”
Paralleling an NFL season, the show will run through the end of January and the playing of the Super Bowl. The range of sports contested is decidedly eclectic: go-cart racing, gymnastics, home run contests, skeet shooting, rugby, putting accuracy, field goal kicking contests, tennis, racquetball, volleyball, eight-ball and various forms of basketball (HORSE, which is played like hangman; one-on-one; four-on-four; and wheelchair).
Wyatt plays both the foil and the do-it-all perfectionist who hates to lose. “People like to see me suffer,” he said. “I like to have the bravado. That way if I lose, people don’t feel sorry for me.
“None of the sponsors wants to lose,” he explained. “I want them to win. If I’m better than them, I’d like to have it where the challenge comes down to the final shot. What’s so good about the show is the unpredictable nature of the program.”
In a program taped earlier this year, Wyatt fought seven consecutive challengers in one-minute boxing rounds to help raise money for the Aurora YMCA. He meted out some punishment, though he took his share of hard licks. “One of the guys was 6 feet 4 inches, 350 (pounds). I also fought some pretty good athletes. . . . I got a bloody nose, though it wasn’t as bad as it looked,” Wyatt deadpaned.
Wyatt studied radio and television, initially at Illinois State University, before transferring to the University of Wisconsin-Superior. He was originally attracted to radio, though he quickly realized television was a more natural and expressive outlet for his talent. After earning his master’s at Superior, Wyatt worked at KDLH, the local CBS affiliate. He returned to Aurora in 1988 with the hope of launching his production company, Preservation Video, which would specialize in the writing and production of television commercials.
“What I discovered was local businesses, for whatever reason, were very resistant to advertising on television. Plus, the local cable outlet would produce their television commercials for free, and I couldn’t compete with that,” he said.
The genesis of the “Sports Challenge” was rooted in Wyatt’s deep affection for the Chicago Bears. He wanted to do a football-themed show that focused on the Bears. Wyatt approached former Bears offensive lineman Kurt Becker, a standout prep star at East Aurora High School, to appear on the show, though he balked when Becker wanted $500 per episode.
“I was sitting in a bar with Harry’s son Chris Childress, and I was saying, `Forget (Becker), I can do my own show.’ I came up with the idea of challenging somebody every week. Then I figured I needed somebody to talk with about the Bears, and Harry the Hat figured in perfectly because he’s funny and he’s knowledgeable. Plus, he’s got flexible hours,” Wyatt said. Harry Childress and Wyatt’s father, Dick, have been friends since the late ’50s.
The football prediction sequences are shot on the back porch of Wyatt’s Aurora home. “It doesn’t matter what the weather is. We’ve shot when it’s snowed, during driving rains and heavy lightning,” Childress said. Although frequently set up as the comic sidekick, Childress is serious about football.
They don’t approach their work with scientific preciseness. The informal, sarcastic exchanges contribute to the improvisational texture. “It’s more off the cuff, free form,” Childress said, “though we look at tendencies, who’s playing quarterback, injuries and what they did the previous week.”
In the pilot for “Bill Wyatt’s Sports Challenge,” made in September 1991, Wyatt filmed himself dueling Chris Childress in a game of HORSE on a driveway court as Childress’ daughters watched from atop the family car. “Make your family proud, Dad,” one of the daughters instructed Childress.
Armed with the pilot, Wyatt approached executives at Aurora’s cable access channel. He was emboldened by the exposure, though he balked at some of the restrictions. The program aired only once a week (most cable access programs are re-run several times). “A couple of times, it never even came on,” Wyatt said.
During the first year, Wyatt produced 16 shows. The program’s breakthrough occurred in June 1992 when Wyatt approached local television and radio entrepreneur Larry Nelson. With his wife, Pam, Nelson operates a string of successful radio stations (WAUR-AM, WSPY-FM) in the Fox Valley. For his nascent television station WFXV (Channel 30), Nelson sought to develop locally driven programming. When Wyatt showed him some reels of his show, Nelson was suitably impressed to immediately offer a slot re-running the program three times a week.
“Bill is a unique talent who brings a real flair and energy to the program,” Nelson said. “I think what I responded to immediately about him was he was community-based. He has deep roots in the community, and he was somebody who has a genuine interest in people and what’s going on. The show is successful because Bill has fashioned a very original idea, and he has a strong personality.”
Whereas Letterman often uses his video segments to undermine or condescend to his subjects, Wyatt has displayed a real affinity for the people who appear on his program. In fact, critics say sometimes he goes too far in that the show frequently resembles an infomercial, blurring the distinctions between advertising and entertainment.
In the first year with Channel 30, Wyatt increased the number of shows to 21. Last year he produced 27 episodes. His goal is to reach 40 and find enough sponsors to sustain the program so regular viewers can take part in the sports challenge.
The show has transcended its cult origins and developed a core backing, though exactly how many viewers the show has is difficult to gauge because Nelson doesn’t subscribe to any of the services that measure ratings and viewers.
But the station has its own barometers. “We carry the Big 10 (feed for college basketball), and when his show gets pre-empted, we get angry calls from people who don’t want the show delayed,” Nelson said.
Wyatt receives stacks of letters from viewers in Aurora, Naperville, Oswego, Sugar Grove and Prestbury.
“I think the show is great, though you need to change your sweat pants more than once a week,” wrote one Aurora viewer. “By the way, could you get me Harry the Hat’s autograph?”
The painful irony for Wyatt is, though showmanship may come naturally to him, what he lacked as a young man was the corresponding athleticism. “I got cut from every team I ever tried out for in high school,” Wyatt said.
“I was never a good athlete,” he said. “I was always okay, but I was small and never was really good enough to play. So maybe a part of the show is to get back at these people, too. I can now say I’m a professional athlete. My attitude about sports is you have to try it. There’s no shame in losing if you try.”
The fifth of eight children born to Dick and Carol Wyatt, Bill is their only son, a fact his mother said “immediately taught him some humility. I can remember coming home, the girls would be gathered in the living room, and Bill would be there wearing my boots, his father’s red sports coat, playing a ukulele, doing impressions of Elvis and Ed Sullivan. He always had a flair for the theatrical and was the family comedian.”
Sports have been the cornerstone of Wyatt’s life. Wyatt’s father is the owner and operator of the Aurora Tennis Club, a nationally recognized teaching center that was instrumental in the development of the perenially strong West Aurora High School girls and boys squads.
His paternal grandfather, Arthur, was a legendary figure in Aurora sports lore, a brilliant football and baseball player who was a standout semiprofessional athlete. “Twice in one game he tackled Red Grange in the open field. When he was still alive, he took Bill to the Cubs games and helped him develop a love for sports,” Wyatt’s father said.
For Wyatt there was never the problem of reconciling his passion with his ability. The cold, hard reality taught him to recognize sports was not the be-all and end-all. “He was like Huckleberry Finn as a kid,” his mother said. “He participated in Little League. I’m sure he was hurt in high school when he was cut from the (baseball) team, but he took the attitude, `If I’m not good enough to play, I’ll find something else to do.’ But he knew he did his best.”
“(Wyatt’s) the kind of guy who will try anything. He’s absolutely fearless,” said Harry Childress. “He’s got a very fertile imagination. He loses more often than he wins, but he’s not afraid to try. I only wish he did this full time.”
Wyatt is the project manager for the Aurora Chamber of Commerce, where he coordinates public relations and community involvement with Aurora-area businesses. “He’s very energetic and innovative, and I hired him because he has that gift of communication,” said Steve Hatcher, president of the chamber. “He’s open, friendly, gregarious, but he’s not simple. My impression of him was that he was a fellow who understood business.”
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“Bill Wyatt’s Sports Challenge” features original shows at 7 p.m. Friday and is repeated at 11:30 p.m. Friday, 11 a.m. Saturday and 11:30 a.m. Sunday. For more information, call Wyatt at 708-892-6436
