XTRA’s Forte Thankful for a Second Chance

No matter what direction the conversation took Friday morning at the Doubletree Hotel, it kept coming back to one subject:

Opportunity.

Chet Forte, a nine-time Emmy Award winner as a director at ABC Sports, was introduced as a new co-host of radio station XTRA’s 1-4 p.m. sports talk show, and how unusual were his opening day remarks?

Well, he thanked John Lynch, chairman and CEO of Noble Broadcast Group--which owns and operates XTRA, thanked several others at the station . . . and then thanked Kevin McKenna, assistant U.S. district attorney, and Judge Joseph H. Rodriguez of Camden, N.J., for giving him permission to move here to accept this job.

“The story of a man given the opportunity to come back to life,” said Lee Hamilton, host of Sportsnite, the station’s four-hour nightly sports talk show.

Forte, who was involved in the first 17 years of Monday Night Football, several of Muhammad Ali’s heavyweight championship fights, the Munich Olympics in which Mark Spitz won seven gold medals, the U.S. Olympic hockey team’s stunning gold medal effort in 1980, and eight other Olympics, acknowledged he has had personal problems.

He left ABC in 1986 with heavy gambling debts. Today, he owes an estimated $1.5 million.

And that’s not all. Where there once were cheers--he was an All-American and 1957 UPI college basketball player of the year at Columbia University--there are now fears. He has enrolled in Gamblers’ Anonymous--he says he hasn’t gambled in three years--and awaits sentencing for mail and wire fraud. He pleaded guilty to that last Sept. 14.

“I don’t have a fear of gambling again,” Forte said, “I have a fear of putting my life back together again.”

Forte’s sentencing is scheduled for mid-June in Camden, N.J., but Larry Lustberg, Forte’s attorney, said Friday he expects the sentencing to be delayed until the fall because of Forte’s ongoing cooperation with government authorities on other cases. Lustberg and Forte are hoping for probation.

Meantime, Forte will be talking sports on San Diego radio.

“I think this is a tremendous opportunity for me,” said Forte, 55. “The situation I’ve gone through in the last five years has basically been a horror story. It’s been difficult not only for myself, but for my family. . . .

“God bless John Lynch for giving me a chance to put my life back together.”

Said Lynch: “He’s brought some of the greatest show biz in sports to television, and we think he can do the same for this radio station. Some of his misfortunes, I think, are our fortunes.”

The only radio sports talk experience Forte has is a one-day, two-hour stint on a Roanoke, Va., radio station in early March. He said it went well.

“It’s something I felt very comfortable doing,” he said.

Forte, who lives in a suburb of Richmond, Va., said he is in San Diego to stay. His family--wife Patricia Jane, 12-year-old daughter Jacqueline Lauren, and mother Ida--will join him in June, he said.