INDIANAPOLIS – Only when his wife walks into the media room at the Indianapolis Colts complex on 56th Street does Mike Chappell realize something has gone wrong. Not wrong in the way most people think of wrong, mind you. A death in the family, for example. That’s a whole other kind of wrong, and nobody has to tell that to Chappell, the longest-tenured Colts beat writer. He buried his daughter 17 years ago.
This is a different kind of wrong, a Mike Chappell kind of wrong:
The room has been filling with former IndyStar colleagues and Colts beat writers for reasons unknown to him, but now it becomes clear. Mike Chappell is about to be the center of attention, and for him this is just so wrong. Not who Chappell is. Not now, not ever. Not even when he was a kid in Beech Grove, so quiet in the halls of elementary school, junior high and then high school that he never did talk to that pretty girl in his class, Cathy Dunlap.
“And our lockers were right across from each other!” she’s saying outside the Colts complex, where Cathy Dunlap – sorry, Cathy Dunlap Chappell – was on hand Wednesday for the biggest honor of her husband’s journalism career.
Well, maybe the biggest honor. There have been quite a few. Past winner of the Indiana Sports Writer of the Year, as voted by colleagues and competitors around the state. Current and forever member of the Indiana Sportswriters and Sportscasters Hall of Fame. Longtime voter for the Pro Football Hall of Fame. The GOAT – greatest of all time – of Colts reporters.
Chap’s been here since the beginning.
“Covering the Colts since we came off the truck in 1984,” says another franchise original, Colts COO Pete Ward, the team’s director of operations in 1984.
On March 28, 1984 Chappell was in his 10th year as sports editor of the Anderson Daily Bulletin, and he wrote that day about the Colts’ arrival in a story featuring a mugshot that most of us newbies in the Colts media room – and compared to Chappell, we’re all newbies – wouldn’t recognize. Who knew Chap had such luscious brown hair? Or that bitchin’ mustache?
Who knew he’d still be here, still covering the Colts 40 years later?
Who knew the work room he walked into Wednesday morning would have a new plaque on the wall when he walked out hours later, and a new name?
Mike Chappell Media Room
'Hey Mike – Peyton Manning here'
Mike Chappell sees his wife – he sees Cathy entering the room behind a phalanx of former IndyStar colleagues – and lowers his head and mutters an expletive. Because he knows.
“I would’ve dressed up,” Chap’s going to say here in a few minutes.
Well, that wouldn’t have been authentic. And everything about Chap is authentic, from his relationships with no-name young reporters and big-name NFL stars to the way he dresses for the locker room on Wednesdays: Cotton shorts and a T-shirt.
Chap’s sitting there, still shaking his head, still not happy about the fuss, as someone presses the play button and a video appears on a TV screen overhead. A man starts talking. You’d recognize him. Played quarterback for the Colts from 1998-2010.
“Hey Mike – Peyton Manning here. Congratulations on 40 years-plus covering the Indianapolis Colts, and special congratulations on the Mike Chappell Media Center. That’s an outstanding honor, well deserved. I appreciate your professionalism over the years. Always enjoyed our football conversations, our life conversations – and you’re the ultimate pro. So congratulations again on this great honor. Wish you all the best. Congratulations, Mike.”
Now someone’s pressing play again, and another video appears. You’d recognize this guy, too.
“Mike Chappell,” croons former Colts running back Edgerrin James, “aka Chap. Want to give you your flowers while you’re here and can hear. You always understood Edge. That’s one thing I appreciate, you know, coming from South Florida – wasn’t used to being in certain surroundings – and you made it so easy to actually do interviews. I tried to duck a lot of interviews but never ducked Chappell, because Chap laid it out right.
“You have so many stories and you’ve touched so many lives that I don’t think you understand the impact of a person like you. … You always made me comfortable. Anyone I’ve ever spoken with, they’ve always talked highly of you. This right here goes to show, man. The Colts appreciate you. Everybody appreciates you. Man, take these flowers, smell these flowers, enjoy these days, enjoy this moment. You’re one of the best to ever do it, and that’s coming from the Edge!”
Now it’s time for Chap to speak, which is wrong. He’ll talk, don’t get it twisted, but usually in the back of the room – not like this. Not out front, the center of attention. Chap does it his way, still seated in his chair on the front row in the media room that now bears his name. He swings around a few inches and softly barks out his benediction.
“I appreciate all you guys,” he says. “The more I talk, I’ll get choked up…
“Appreciate all you guys, and Angie would have appreciated this.”
Right. Angie.
'Angie is looking down very proudly'
Angie was 31, fierce and outspoken, not like her younger sister Rebecca – whose personality was more like their dad’s, more like Mike’s. Rebecca was shy, quiet. Angela Rose Chappell was ferocious, right to the end, bald and bold and smiling for photos alongside her 8-year-old son, Aaron, as they lay in her bed at St. Francis Hospital.
"I know, today, Angie is looking down very proudly," Pete Ward said as he unveiled the Mike Chappell Media Room, with an engraved picture of Chap and Peyton Manning.
Angie, who played in the handbell choir at First Presbyterian Church in Anderson and on the volleyball team at Anderson University, fought Acute Myelogenous Leukemia for her final two years. Becky, her younger sister, was traveling back to Indiana every few months to donate stem cells and blood, the whole family fighting alongside Angie until there were no more weapons to wield, only goodbyes to say.
She died on Dec. 14, 2007, a day her dad marks every year with a social media message. His latest message – on Twitter on Dec. 14, 2023 – was the most Mike Chappell piece of writing ever: Humble, almost apologizing for asking people to please help save someone’s life:
Remembering the strongest person I’ve ever known.
Angie: July 2, 1976-Dec. 14, 2007
Leukemia sucks. I know things are tight, but donating to Leukemia and Lymphoma Society is never a bad thing.
Typical Chap. So was the way he went through the school system of Beech Grove without ever speaking to Cathy Dunlap, not meeting her until nearly 20 years after their graduation in 1969, and only because a mutual friend decided to set the two up. They were among four couples for dinner at St. Elmo Steak House, then a Genesis concert at the Hoosier Dome. It was Jan. 24, 1987.
“He was shy,” Cathy says. “Mike’s kind of … shy.”
They’ve been married almost 40 years, nearly as long as Chap’s been connected to the Colts. He was here for Manning and Andrew Luck and all the quarterbacks that came afterward, for Reggie Wayne the Pro Bowl receiver and Reggie Wayne the Colts receivers coach, for David Thornton the rookie linebacker out of North Carolina in 2002 and David Thornton, Colts’ vice president of player engagement, who was in the room Wednesday to congratulate Chappell.
Naming the media work room for Chappell was an idea that started in the Colts’ media relations department and was floated up the chain and met with acclaim from Ward and the man at the very top, Jim Irsay, who also cut a personal video for Chap, but one not shown to the room Wednesday. That was for Chap’s eyes only.
Irsay’s a grinder, same as Chap, who once went 20 years without missing practice. You’d see Chap at the Colts complex on 56th Street or training camp in Anderson or Westfield with a cast on his ankle or compression socks on his calf or even now, trudging with a cane through the hallways of Lucas Oil Stadium on Sunday after the Colts’ 16-10 win against Miami, preparing to file a report for Fox 59. Later Sunday night you didn’t see Chappell conduct a visit he makes in private outside Lucas Oil Stadium, when he finds the brick he had inscribed with Angie’s name when the stadium opened in 2008.
Chappell left the Anderson Bulletin the summer of 1984 to cover the Colts for the IndyStar for 30 years, then worked a year for WRTV-6, and the last nine for Fox 59. How much longer will Mike Chappell cover a franchise that doesn’t know a media contingent without him? Irsay called Chap this weekend to get a gauge on things, a story Cathy tells by imitating Jim’s raspy voice:
“How long you gonna do this, buddy?”
Then she does a pitch-perfect imitation of her husband:
“I dunno.”
Now Cathy gathers herself outside the Mike Chappell Media Room and delivers the kind of kicker her husband would approve, just a devastatingly insightful final sentence to a typical Mike Chappell story – meaning, one that gets all the facts, and gets them all right.
“If you remember Andy Rooney from ‘60 Minutes,’” she says of the longtime radio and TV satirist. “He worked to 92. He retired and a few weeks later he dropped – he died. So that’s Mike.”
Well then, Chap, make yourself comfortable in the Mike Chappell Media Room. See you tomorrow. And the day after that. And after that.
Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at@GreggDoyelStaror atwww.facebook.com/greggdoyelstar.
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