Super Bowl of the Day - Sometimes the Bears Eat You
And in 1985, there was a feeding frenzy every Sunday, a season-long orgy of carnage that culminated 21 years ago today at Super Bowl XX, when the Bears dispensed with the mere formality of defeating the overmatched Patriots, 46-10. There's been so much said about this Bears team over the years that it's hardly worth going into in much detail. Mostly what you remember about the big game anyway is the week beforehand and all of Jim McMahon's bullshit, the Bourbon Street Pied Piper, mooning the helicopter, dissing the quality of ho to be found in N.O., and of course the personally inscribed headbands - "Rozelle" and my favorite, "Acupuncture."
Ditka, Buddy Ryan, Mike Singletary, The Fridge, Sweetness, and yes, The Super Bowl Shuffle (if I never hear that thing again so long as I live...) - good times. For those of you No Masians out there who weren't old enough to have seen this team, let me tell you that it was like no other that I've seen in my lifetime in any sport, not the Jordan Bulls, not the Gretzky Oilers. Watching the '85 Bears gave you a feeling of utter finality. You knew there was just no way in hell they could lose. Because, as we all know, you can't lose if the other team can't score.
They gave us a lot of great memories, and yet one sour one as well, one that I hope haunts Mike Ditka every night before he goes to sleep. The Super Bowl appearance that Walter Payton had been waiting for his entire life, and the Bears score THREE touchdowns on rushes at the goalline, and Walter gets the call on exactly none of them. In the third quarter, with the game already on ice, Ditka lets his circus freak rookie, Fridge Perry, run one in rather than giving Sweetness a much-earned tip of the cap. Say what you will about Ditka, but class was never his thing.
2 Comments:
The thing I remember about this Bears team was that they came into the '85 season with a bad taste in their mouths from what the 49ers did to them in the NFC championship game the year before.
The Niners not only shut out the Bears 23-0 in the NFC title game but they rubbed it in by having Guy McIntyre - one of their starting guards - run the ball a few times while they wound the clock down. I thought it was a little bit classless for the Niners to show them up like that and I think the Bears took it personally as well. It was the first time I'd seen anyone use one of their linemen as a ballcarrier and to do it in a championship game was definitely tantamount to taunting.
Of course, the next year, the Bears draft William Perry and have him help run up the score on the Pats in the Super Bowl. I guess what they say about how abuse goes in cycles is true.
at least the fridge got a G.I. Joe made of himself out of it.
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