Tim Doyle takes a break from cooking breakfast as he notices his 5-year-old son walking toward him. Joe, pretending it's Halloween, is wearing a police officer's uniform.
"Are you a good cop, Joe?" Doyle asks. "Or do you take money from the mob?"
Doyle laughs loudly enough to rattle the plates. He grins, devilishly.
The sausage and eggs can wait. Laughter is the nourishment he craves, especially from others.
Doyle is 6-foot-5 with an even bigger personality.
His wife, Susie, works in radiation oncology at a cancer center in west suburban Warrenville.
"Every time I see a patient," she says, "I put on gloves and a mask. I try not to touch anything I don't have to."
"Including me!" Tim cracks.
This is Doyle. Anything to get a rise or cackle from those listening. It's in his DNA.
But that same trait is what derailed a promising career in sports broadcasting. Doyle was Charles Barkley without the cred. He shot from the hip without considering the carnage.
He said enough outrageous stuff for the Big Ten Network not to renew his contract. A scuffle with former Bulls guard Kendall Gill left him without a role on Comcast SportsNet, now NBC Sports Chicago. Doyle also lost a full-time job with Stadium, the multiplatform national sports network based at the United Center, but that was due to a change in its programming strategy.
That came in 2018. And as a result the guy who lives to make people laugh cried himself to sleep and hid foreclosure notices from Susie.
"Dark times," he says.
What saved him was sports betting.
But it's not what you think.
