Contrasting Coaches : Bill Walsh and Mike Ditka Typify Style of 49ers and Bears

If the San Francisco 49ers and Chicago Bears were fighting for the heavyweight title instead of the National Football Conference championship Sunday, it would be billed as Dempsey-Tunney all over again.

The teams’ images are reflections of their coaches--on the one hand, Bill Walsh, cerebral and urbane, a native Californian; on the other, Mike Ditka, street-wise and street-tough, the product of a Pennsylvania steel town.

Ditka thought about that for a moment during the coaches’ press conferences at a downtown hotel here Friday evening.

“That’s probably true,” he finally said, tongue in cheek. “They (the 49ers) are probably more intelligent about the way they do things.

“But it comes down to execution. You can draw all the fancy X’s and O’s you want. It’s going to be won in the trenches.”

But for the Bears, strangers to title games for 21 years, this week also has been a scenario like The Bowery Boys Go to the Ball. They have been practicing in Santa Rosa, 40 miles north of the city.

“We aren’t sure why we’re here,” Ditka said, “and a lot of people don’t want us to be here, but we are here. The only thing I’ve noticed is over the last couple of days we’re just anxious to play the game.

“What happens, like this room is filled with media, that’s great for our game, but it gets hard on the players. They just want it to happen.

“It’s amazing. We’re in Santa Rosa, 1,500 miles from Chicago, and you can’t get through the crowds up there. The guys can’t even get out of their rooms without signing a hundred autographs.

“I’m not sure they’re Bear fans or whatever, but it’s hard on the players.”

The 49ers are the home team--in fact, they could become the first team to go all the way through the playoffs to a Super Bowl without boarding an airplane.

Said Walsh: “There are a lot of pros related to it, because we’re more used to this form of weather and this kind of field this time of year.

“But there are also the distractions--the negatives--where you’re caught right up at home in the middle of the so-called hype before the game. We’ve been a very effective team on the road (8-0) and a reasonably effective team at home (8-1), so I don’t see any real advantage, other than just being used to the conditions.”

One local columnist suggested in print that the 49ers were tense, but Walsh described his team as “very loose, when we’re not concentrating on football. On the field it’s dead serious. (Off the field) we’ve never really been uptight, all the way through ’81 (their last Super Bowl) and before.”

If Walsh’s mood reflected that of his players, the 49ers are reasonably relaxed.

At one point he was asked about a report that he and quarterback Joe Montana would work the ABC telecast of the Super Bowl at Stanford if the 49ers aren’t in it.

Walsh said he knew nothing about it, then smiled and added: “Both Joe and I are very good and glib on our feet. We’d be very smooth, I’m sure.”

There also was a report that San Francisco business leaders hoped the 49ers wouldn’t be in the Super Bowl because it would be bad for business, with no visitors arriving from one side.

“The rest of the community doesn’t feel that way--and they (the businessmen) would probably be wise not to identify themselves,” Walsh said.

And when Walsh said, seriously, that “my concern right now would be the Chicago blitz,” someone asked if he meant the defunct United States Football League team--the Blitz.

“We’ll take them on any time,” Walsh said, laughing.

Walsh said he expected “a low-scoring game,” in that these two teams allowed fewer points that anyone in the NFC this season.

“I don’t see either team washing the other team away,” he said. “It’s going to be tough moving the ball.”

The 49ers’ style is to do it with finesse. The Bears are more inclined to go for a knockout.

“When we started out this season, we wanted to put a chip on our shoulder and make people respect the way we play the game,” Ditka said. “It’s not very glamorous, but it doesn’t have to be glamorous. It just has to be effective.”

Ditka said he hadn’t instilled a hard-nosed attitude in the Bears.

“We had a lot of guys on defense who didn’t even know the names of the offense,” he said. “They didn’t want to know their names. They just wanted to beat ‘em up.

“I think (now) our defense does respect the job the offense does. They know they’re trying.”

Much of the attitude adjustment was due to Ditka’s influence.

“The guys whose backs I’ve jumped on are either here playing better, or they’re not here at all,” he said.

But, unlike Walsh, nobody has called him a genius yet, with one exception.

“My dad called me this morning and the first thing he said was, ‘Hello, genius,’ ” Ditka said. “I have a saying on my wall: ‘There are a lot of geniuses out of work.’ ”