Remembering Mike Ditka

I have three regrets as a sportswriter.

One, I never met Muhammad Ali. I was seven when he fought Leon Spinks to win the heavyweight title in 1978 for the third and last time. It was a big deal in a lot of people’s homes and mine was no exception. Unlike most big fights, this one was televised live on free TV, ABC Sports. I didn’t really understand what the fuss was about. And then the fight started, and I saw a side of my mother that I didn’t know existed.

“Hit him, Ali, hit him!” she pleaded in a blood-thirsty way. When mom’s a fan, so is son. I was hooked and started screaming for him, too.

Two, I never met Walter Payton. I’ve gone into detail in a previous blog about my admiration of the greatest all-around football player. No need to do it again.

Three, I never met Mike Ditka.

This is probably a good thing, because if I had, I might have broken the cardinal rule of sports reporting: Never ask for autographs.

The Bears won their only Super Bowl when I was a lonesome 14 year old. They were my heroes. They played a certain way – physical, with a chip on their shoulder and a flair no team in the league could match.

“Characters with character,” Ditka used to like to say.

He should know. They were taking after him.

Ditka, coach of the legendary Super Bowl-winning ‘85 Bears, died Friday morning at 86. He won an NFL Championship as a player with the Bears, won a Super Bowl as an assistant coach with the Dallas Cowboys and was a ground-breaking tight end elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

He’ll be remembered by Chicagoans as the head coach of the most entertaining team ever.

There will be a bunch of obituaries written about how much Ditka embodied Chicago. He’s what Chicagoans like to think they are: tough, never intimidated, a winner.

Ditka would be the first to tell you that he wasn’t the greatest X’s and O’s man and wasn’t going to come up with some great offensive scheme like Bill Walsh to beat you. As a player, he was going to figuratively punch you in the mouth (sometimes literally). And he made his players do the same thing. Even the ones who didn’t like Ditka – Hall of Fame defensive lineman Richard Dent never forgave him for calling him “Robert” in chiding him for what he perceived as laziness, and linebacker Otis Wilson called him a racist who preferred white players over black – credit him for making them play so aggressively.

Hubris would eventually catch up with Ditka and his ‘85 Bears players. They did way too many TV commercials, way too many radio and TV talk shows and wrote way too many autobiographies after winning the Super Bowl. There would be no repeat.

As Dent has said, Ditka is the reason the Bears won one Super Bowl, and he’s the reason they didn’t win three more.

It’s a backhanded compliment but true. Also true is this:

Though he was born and raised in Aliquippa, Pennsylvania, Ditka will be remembered as a Chicagoan and is to be respected for instilling pride in the city and the football team it represents.