Latest News
It is purely coincidental that Mike Ditka — former Chicago Bears and Dallas Cowboys tight end and former Cowboys assistant coach and Bears head coach and who works as a football analyst for ESPN — will have his jersey No. 89 retired Dec. 9 at halftime of the Bears-Cowboys “Monday Night Football” game (seen on ESPN) at Soldier Field.
Seldom has a Brian Urlacher jersey looked better.
OK, maybe not purely coincidental. Maybe not even partly coincidental. Decisions such as this do not blossom overnight. The team made the announcement Friday after Brad Biggs of the Chicago Tribune broke the story late Thursday/early Friday. No telling how long the process for an agreement between the Bears and Ditka took.
He was fired as coach in 1992. He coached the 1985 Bears to the franchise’s only Super Bowl Championship. He played on the franchise’s previous NFL champion, the 1963 team that defeated the New York Giants 14-10 at Wrigley Field.
“Mike Ditka embodies the spirit of everything the Bears are about,” Bears chairman George H. McCaskey said on the team’s website.
Whatever that means.
“He’s an icon,” McCaskey said. “The last time we won a championship Mike Ditka was our coach and the last time we won before that Mike Ditka was a player. The organization knew [retiring his number] was the right thing to do.”
Even if it did take the oraganization about 20 years since his dismissal to make the call.
“To have your jersey retired, it’s something that if I went through my life and it never happened, it would never change the love I had for what I had in Chicago playing for the Bears,” Ditka said on “Mike & Mike in the Morning” on ESPN Radio. “But it’s certainly a tremendous honor when you think about the guys who have [had their numbers] retired. And the guys I played with, the Bill Georges, the Dick Butkuses, the Gale Sayers, just those alone … what a great honor it is.”
Ditka’s jersey will be the 14th — and final — Bears number to be retired. The others:
* Bronko Nagurski (3)
* George McAfee (5)
* George Halas (7)
* Willie Galimore (28)
* Walter Payton (34)
* Gale Sayers (40)
* Brian Piccolo (41)
* Sid Luckman (42)
* Dick Butkus (51)
* Bill Hewitt (56)
* Bill George (61)
* Clyde “Bulldog” Turner (66)
* Red Grange (77)
The last Bears to have their numbers retired were Butkus and Sayers, so the franchise has a proud (?) history of procrastinating in honoring its former players.
“He revolutionized the tight end position as a player and grabbed an entire franchise by the throat as a head coach and willed it to victory in the Super Bowl,” McCaskey said. “We have more retired numbers than any other team in the NFL. After this, we do not intend to retire any more numbers but we thought if there is going to be a last one, there is no more appropriate one than 89.”
Maybe so. If so, then there are a few former Bears who merit having their numbers retired but won’t. Among that group are Dan Hampton (99), Mike Singletary (50) and Doug Atkins (81), all Pro Football of Fame inductees. You can toss in recently retired Brian Urlacher (54) for a more contemporary name.
Atkins is a less familiar name to some fans because he played during Ditka’s playing days with the Bears and before that. Atkins played for the Bears 1955-66. He exited after he asked for a trade and ended his career with the expansion New Orleans Saints, where he played 1967-69. The Saints retired his No. 81. Atkins was as dominating a defensive end as the game had seen.
David Spada (with whom your humble correspondent co-hosts “Sports & Torts” on Thursdays on Talkzone.com) and I chatted with Atkins by phone from his home in Tennessee on Friday. He was happy for Ditka. As for himself, he professed not caring at this point whether he would have his number retired by the Bears.
There is/was/will be no excuse for Atkins not having been honored by the team. Because of a lack of mobility, Atkins does not expect to travel to Canton, Ohio, in August for the 50th anniversary of the Pro Footbal Hall of Fame. That’s unfortunate, but that’s sometimes the way things are when they are beyond human control.
Retiring a number never was beyond human control. It was someone(s) deciding not to honor someone. “Too many numbers already were retired” was the company line.
In that case, use a little creativity. Maybe the Bears should have retired Ditka’s mustache or his sweater vest from his coaching days.
A good friend of mine, Brian Bernardoni, tweeted an idea: Have a Ring of Honor at Soldier Field to honor former players. He might not have been the first person to make that suggestion (or maybe he was). Anyway, it’s an excellent idea.
Meaning if the Bears do decide to adopt something like that (which other teams have been doing for years), the team will decide to do so after most of the players are long gone — not merely from their playing days, but from this world.
And that would be more than unfortunate. It would be inexcusable.
Well, as long as we’re on something of an NFL theme, we might as well provide some NFL-themed video. Even better some NFL cheerleader-themed video. Because the Bears disbanded the Honey Bears after their Super Bowl championship season, there is no recent footage of lovely ladies on the sidelines cheering on the Bears to victory. Hope the following videos help offset the suffering that some fans have had to endure:
And from the non-football world, the editorial and video departments at elliottharris.com are happy to provide the daily dose of non-gratuitous videos:
Advertising opportunities are available on ElliottHarris.com. For information and rates, contact sales@elliottharris.com.