A familiar voice will return to Chicago sports media this week when “Jim Shorts” begins making NFL picks on David Kaplan’s “REKAP” show on YouTube.
“Shorts,” voiced by Chicago radio legend Kevin Matthews, will join Kaplan and Ryan McGuffey every Friday. Matthews hosted on The Loop for 12 years, often putting his alter ego on the air to talk sports.
“I’ve been doing pigskin picks for five years; ‘Jim’ has a YouTube channel,” Matthews said. “We’ve gotten really good at picking games. You can say what you want about Jim, but he’s killing it. I’ve always liked Kap. He goes, ‘Why don’t we do something?’ ”
Kaplan and McGuffey will appear on-screen alongside an animated “Shorts,” who’s drawn by Chicagoan Dan Vic.
“ ‘Jim’ was born when radio had so many restrictions in the ’80s, where if I made up a voice, I could blame it on a different person,” said Matthews, who began the bit at his first radio job, in Grand Rapids, Michigan. “Our general manager wanted to know, ‘Who’s that guy doing sports? Tell him to shut up.’
“My last day at that station, I gave the general manager’s office furniture away. And you had to give it away because it was a contest, or the FCC would pull your license. I could get away with murder by just coming up with new characters. The general manager, he was just on his big boat drinking. He never went in the studio, he just cashed checks.”
Since his days at The Loop, Matthews has written two books and is coming out with a movie Oct. 7, “Broken Mary: The Kevin Matthews Story.” It’s centered on a broken statue of the Virgin Mary he found next to a dumpster in 2011, sending him on an unexpected, life-changing journey. Both books also are centered around the statue.
In the meantime, Matthews and “Shorts” will share NFL picks with a REKAP audience that has 239,000 subscribers and recently passed 11 million views.
“It’s so unique,” Matthews said of his new endeavor. “Nobody’s incorporating animation [to make NFL picks].”