Lew Freedman - Chicago Bears: The Complete Illustrated History

Chicago BEARS
THE COMPLETE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY

Superstar linebacker Brian Urlacher acknowledges the fans applause after making a tackle against the Minnesota Vikings in 2004. Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images

Bears fullback Neal Anderson dives for yardage in a 1992 game against the Atlanta Falcons. Andy Hayt/Getty Images

Lew Freedman
Foreword by Dan Jiggetts

This edition published by MVP Books, 2010

First published in 2008 by Voyageur Press, an imprint of MBI Publishing Company and the Quayside Publishing Group, 400 First Avenue N, Suite 300, Minneapolis, MN 55401 USA

Copyright 2008, 2010 by Compendium Publishing Ltd.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Digital Edition: 978-1-61060-093-4
Hardcover Edition: 978-0-7603-3231-3

Freedman, Lew.

Chicago Bears : the complete illustrated history / Lew Freedman.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-0-7603-3231-3 (hb w/ jkt)
1. Chicago Bears (Football team)History. I. Title.
GV956.C5F7315 2008
796.323640977311dc22

2008009843

Printed in China

Walter Payton running against the Green Bay Packers in 1980. Payton is the second most prolific rusher in NFL history. Focus on Sports/Getty Images

Once a Chicago Bear, always a Chicago Bear. Once youve been associated with the club I think that lasts forever.

I was drafted by the Bears in the sixth round in 1976 as a tackle out of Harvard. I grew up on Long Island and thought about pro football, but it was always Boy, I wonder what that would be like? By the time I got drafted I was negotiating with Toronto in the Canadian Football League. They had put some money on the table. At the time I did not know a lot about the Chicago Bears. One of my roommates in college was from Chicago. He was constantly telling me all the great things about the city, but I wasnt sure because he had gone to secondary school in England! When I signed my contract I was invited to give a little talk at the Harvard Club. I got my first look at Chicago and I was excited about it.

I loved it. They had me staying at the Hyatt downtown and from OHare when you drive down Lake Shore Drive, especially at night, it is an awesome sight. You see the lights and the city is laid out before you. It was fabulous. I was a government major in college and this place was ground central for a lot of what was going on in politics. I had a Harvard degree, but I didnt want to go into pro football with the attitude that it wasnt important. It was important to work hard at playing professional football and try to be as good as I possibly could be. I had some other things in my mind about looking into politics and the business environment, but I felt those things would work themselves out during the course of the off-season.

Right away you could tell how important the Bears were to Chicago. From the first day, when you land at OHare and the people look at you and they understand why youre there, you find out that the Bears are No. 1 in this town. There had been struggling years after the 1963 team won the championship and it had been a struggle pretty much right up to 1976. We were .500 in my first season and the fans were acting like that was the playoffs. Thats when you got an idea how tough it had been, but also how near and dear this team was to everyone. You understand that the fans in this city love this football team. They may not always love the way it is run, but they love the football team itself.

After I retired I went into sports broadcasting not a career I envisioned for myself until I had been playing for about five yearsand through all of those years and later, the fans were the same. In the Super Bowl era, 1985 and 1986, it was just frenzied. The feeling was just off the charts.

The funny thing was that I played with a lot of those guys and I had a really good idea of the personalities. It was just fascinating. It was a great football team and you knew it was coming. There was a batch of wild and crazy guys who had a lot of fun, but when the whistle blew it was time to play. You talk about walking in and going after somebody, my goodness.

That team endures in the public mind like no other and theres no question its because of the personalities in addition to winning. Recently, somebody came up to me and they were talking about The Super Bowl Shuffle because that was unique at the time. Imagine that, a rap video from a pro sports team in the mid-80sthis was more than twenty years after they dropped the songit was and is iconic. People tell me that they still remember when they were kids hearing The Super Bowl Shuffle and how it opened their eyes to the ways sports and entertainment merged. It was a unique group of people and it definitely was a unique time in Chicago sports. Even with the great success of the Chicago Bulls and Michael Jordan I dont know if it had that spirit, or if that spirit has ever been recaptured by any team in Chicago.

A lot of those guys stayed around Chicago and if theyre not around Chicago they are involved somehow or another with the NFL. Theres been a lot of success after they finished playing and that is a sign of something. Football is such a short period in your life and then you have the rest of your life to live. Hopefully, you live it in a productive way and you do something thats positive.

With all of the personalities on that Super Bowl team, I dont think there was anyone who was more fun than Walter Payton. He was a great friend and a unique human being. You had to be careful with him because he was such a practical joker. If you got him back it just escalated. It didnt end. That was the beginning of hostilities. Like when he would have a sock-throwing contest with our very staid general manager, the late great Jim Finks. Heres a 60-something man with silver hair and people telling him he should be the next commissioner of the league and hes sneaking around the locker room trying to surprise Walter and hit him with the balled up socks.