Cheering for Return of Honey Bears to NFL

September 8, 2013 @ admin → No Comments

The NFL’s kickoff weekend is upon us. Once upon a time, it encompassed merely a few hours on a Sunday afternoon. Now, thanks in no small part to television, there are games on Thursday night, Sunday afternoon and night and Monday night. Regardless of any proliferation of pigskin presence on your TV or other viewing devices of the 21st century, the season opener is a great time for all fans of all teams. Or should be. After all, this is as close to a winning season as some teams might get. If you can’t be optimistic before kickoff of your team’s season opener, when can you?

Too bad the Ben-Gals won’t be at Soldier Field for Sunday’s game.

For Chicago and its football fans of the Bears variety, the opening game is a reminder of the greatness of the Bears. Well, it’s either greatness or longevity. OK, perhaps both. The Bears have been around a long time — since the inception of the NFL when they were the Decatur Staleys. What isn’t around — and hasn’t been since the 1985 season when the Bears won the only Super Bowl championship in franchise history — is a team of cheerleaders.

The Honey Bears disappeared after the Super Bowl XX success. The Bears have not won a Super Bowl since. Cause and effect? Coincidence. Feel free to draw your own conclusions.

How the NFL has not mandated all teams to have cheerleading squads is beyond my comprehension. Then again, so are a lot of simpler things. Even so, you (OK, I) would have to think that at some point the Competition Committee looks into this matter. At the very least, if a visiting team is playing a franchise that does not have cheerleaders, the visiting team ought to be allowed/encouraged/ordered (take your pick) to have cheerleaders on the premises for that contest. Would you rather TV pan to a crowd shot or a cheerleader shot?

Now that that vent is over with before Bears kickoff, it’s back to figures of the less titillating type (unless numbers really do excite you more than fetching females in skimpy costumes do).

MOST VICTORIES ON KICKOFF WEEKEND

Cheerleaders should be part of every Chicago Bears game.

53: Chicago Bears
52: Green Bay Packers
49: New York Giants
44: Detroit Lions
40: Pittsburgh Steelers, Washington Redskins

TEAMS WITH THE BEST WINNING PERCENTAGE ON KICKOFF WEEKEND

Dallas Cowboys (.673): 35-17-1
Denver Broncos (.635): 33-19-1
Jacksonville Jaguars (.611): 11-7-0
Chicago Bears (.602): 53-35-5
New York Giants (.590): 49-34-5
Note: Ties before 1972 did not count in winning percentage

The statistical information comes from the NFL’s PR machine, which is awfully good. Any mistakes regarding these figures in all likelihood is the result of the data entry department at elliottharris.com goofing up. I believe that’s the technical term. Anyway, here are some more figures for your consideration:

* The 47 Super Bowl winners have a 38-8-1 record in the Kickoff Weekend games of their championships

* The Super Bowl XLVII-champion Baltimore Ravened, who lost at Denver on Thursday night, had the second-longest active winning streak in season openers (five).

* Since 1978, when the NFL adopted the 16-game schedule, and excluding the abbreviated season of 1982 [npt sure why the NFL doesn’t want to call that the “strike season,” which it was], teams that win their season opener are more than twice as likely to reach the playoffs than losers of their opening game: Of the 506 teams that won openers, 266 went to the playoffs; of the 507 teams which lost openers, 120 went to the playoffs. There are a different number of winning and losing teams in season openers because the NFL had 31 teams from 1999 to 2001, which creates an odd number for the total number of results.

* The New England Patriots have won nine consecutive games on Kickoff Weekend, the longest active streak. The most consecutive opening-game victories:

17: Dallas Cowboys (1965-1981)
11: Miami Dolphins (1992-2002)
10: Detroit Lions/Portsmouth Spartans (1930-1939)
9: Chicago Bears (1984-1992), New England Patriots (2004-2012)
8: Baltimore Colts (1955-1962), Pittsburgh Steelers (2003-2010)

The 2013 Cincinnati Ben-Gals. In case Bears fans have forgotten what a cheerleading squad looks like.

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Here is where to go for a daily dose of non-gratuitous video (thanks to the epic efforts of the editorial and video departments at elliottharris.com and their rather all-encompassing definition of “gratuitous”). Thought we might toss in some cheerleader videos, while we were at it: