The Good, The Bad, and The Bears Fan.
I was six years old when I saw the Super Bowl Shuffle on TV for the very first time. And there are two things I can remember from this experience:
- How amazing it was that a song could be so gawd damn awful, but yet, so awesome at the same time.
- I didn’t know who #4 was — but he damn sure wouldn’t find rhythm if it came with a map! I now know that guy to be backup QB Steve Fuller (please never attempt dancing again, Steve).
Other than the Super Bowl Shuffle, I have pretty much no personal memories about the 1985 Chicago Bears. I don’t recall watching any games. And any players from the roster are people I learned about over the years after the team’s heyday.
Despite this lack of personal experience with that team, I still rode high on the bragging rights that came with being the greatest defense of all-time. While it was once a point of pride, I have to admit that it is now quite pathetic. Sadly being a Bears fan is like some old bastard still gloating about shit that happened decades ago in their youthful prime — only to finally realize nobody gives a shit anymore.
The irony of it all is I didn’t really care about football at first.
In the 90s, streetball was the past-time of the inner city. So it is no exaggeration that I played basketball day in and day out at home or in alleys or at any court I could find a pick-up game. Not to mention living in Chicago — Michael Jordan was like a god for kids like me. So naturally, I evolved into a diehard Bulls fan — which happens to come with its own share of traumatic experiences. And I won’t get into them, but sometimes, it feels like being a fan of any Chicago sports team is like enjoying a swift kick in the balls.
But as far as football goes, it wasn’t until I joined the Marines and was deployed when I really started paying attention to the game. On ship and at sea, games would come on via the Armed Forces Network. And with so many servicepeople from all over the country all in one place, the berthing areas on ship often felt like floating sports bars as everyone clamored for their hometown teams. I def had to make sure I represented the Chi, so I talked my shit and bragged on the Bears even though football was more of an afterthought to me.
Coincidentally, the Chicago Bears team during this time (2006) was special.
They had a defense that rivaled the famed ’85 Bears with names like Brian Urlacher, Lance Briggs, Peanut Tillman & his infamous “Peanut Punch.” They played in one of the greatest games in NFL history when they came back to beat the Arizona Cardinals. I watched the highlights on ESPN while in Kuwait and laughed my gawd damn ass of when Dennis Green blew a gasket in the press conference with his infamous line: “They are who we thought they were!” And most importantly, they had my favorite Bears player of all-time, Devin Hester, who electrified the game with kick-off & punt returns. When he ran back that TD in the Super Bowl to open the game, I pretty much lost my damn mind. I loved it. I was hooked. And I’ve been following the team ever since.
But in pursuing the high that I got watching that 2006 team, I’ve had to live through some really shitty Bears history.
First, I had to suffer through mediocrity when we traded for Jay Cutler.
Any Bears fan from that time could tell you about the excitement we had to think we finally gained the first meaningful quarterback in our decades of history — only to be let down…again. And to be fair, it wasn’t completely Cutler’s fault. A lot of it was an inept offensive scheme — but Jay is, unfortunately, the face of that Era of WTFness — deserved or not.
After Jay Cutler came in Marc Trestman who also gave us some hope since he had experienced success in the Canadian Football League. But the fact that this success was in the Canadian Football League should have been a blood red flag. Trestman peppered his reign as Head Coach of the Bears with inexplicable playcalling that he justified with math formulas and calculations. It’s quite fascinating how he managed to take a subject I already hated and give me a reason to hate it even more. But his era eventually ended as well.
With Marc Trestman out the door, in came John Fox, who wasn’t an extremely terrible coach. He just wasn’t the guy we needed to develop Mitch Trubisky. But his share of Bears history is important because not surprisingly, the Bears sucked AND failed to maximize Mitch’s potential, so it set up the arrival of Matt Nagy — who right now is on pretty much every Bears fan’s shit list.
And if we’re really being honest, Nagy too brought excitement to the team. He brought creativity and freshness that seemed to complement well with an incredible defense. And his first season in the driver seat saw us go to the playoffs and even had Super Bowl aspirations. But in keeping with our tradition of imminent suckery, we lost our playoff game due to the fact that our kicker could not NOT hit the goal posts seemingly every time he kicked the freaking ball.
By the way, do you know how painful it is to lose a damn playoff game by hitting the goal post THEN hitting the crossbar — AFTER you’ve done it like five times during the season? Cody Parkey should probably not show his face in Chicago ever again for his own personal safety. Hell, I might even fuck him up if I see him.
Anyway, since Matt Nagy’s honeymoon season as Bears HC, he’s replaced Cody Parkey as someone that betta not ever be caught in public anywhere in a 50-mile radius of Chicago. Sure, the Bears have made the playoffs in 2 of the last 3 years with him running the show. But it’s largely IMO because of the defense that that has even happened. When you look at the offense, it has been downright putrid — which is confusing because Matt Nagy is supposed to be some kind of magical offensive football warlock or something.
For a hot ass minute, we thought maybe Mitchell Trubisky was just that bad, but five different QBs later, anyone with half a brain in Chicago now realizes that Nagy was the true incompetent fuckhead all this time. And we now risk him ruining our first real chance at a legit franchise QB in Justin Fields because he has concocted this half-brained development plan not to mention not even bothering to create a gameplan for Justin’s debut that could complement Justin’s skillset. And that’s where we are now — waiting on the moment to get this motherfucker Nagy out of Chicago on the first thing smoking.
Sure, there’s been some good in the Bears’ history. And there’s been some bad as well. But I think we have now reached an all-time low — at least for me. It’s even lower than the time I “stopped” being a fan and began rooting for my second favorite NFL team, the Pittsburgh Steelers. This tiny break in my less than romantic relationship with the Bears lasted no more than a few weeks until I realized that my heart was still with and always would be with the Monsters of the Midway. But that didn’t come without the realization of being a fan of the Chicago Bears also meant that I had to deal with consistent frustration sprinkled in with a year or two of success that never really leads to anything.
The fall guys have always seemed to be the players, and to a greater extent, the coaches. But the reality is that this shit pie was baked and served by the McCaskey family. They put Ted Phillips in charge of things and he has quite clearly shown that he doesn’t know what the fuck he is doing in terms of football.
But the organization keeps making money.
That’s because Chicago Bears fans, ironically, are the problem with the Bears. Until we stop watching and stop going to games, the team will still make money. Therefore, the team will not have the motivation to make thoughtful, intelligent decisions regarding the game. In any free market, the consumer has the ultimate control over what products succeed or fail. But our loyalty to our city and team has blinded us from our power as consumers. As a result, we continue to consume a shitty product.
So what do we do?
The answer is nothing.
We can’t give up on what we love so much. We don’t look at our beloved Bears as a product. We look at the Bears as a source of pride…even if the team hasn’t been much of that lately. So all we can do is accept it. It comes with the territory. Being a Chicago Bears fan means appreciating the good, living with the bad, and accepting that we are essentially the ugly: a fanbase that puts our love for our team over our own sanity — for better or for worse.
