A NEW FRUGALITY DAWNS IN CHICAGO : Bears Aren’t Going to Pay Big Salaries, But Why Start on Great Defensive Players?

From his headquarters on Lake Shore Drive overlooking Lake Michigan, George Halas ruled the Chicago Bears for 63 years until he died at 88 in 1983.

His was one of the longest reigns in American history, comparable to that of Connie Mack, who owned and managed baseball’s Philadelphia A’s for more than half of the 20th Century.

During Halas’ final years, however, the Bears were in a state of almost perpetual hibernation.

Not until last season did they come to life, briefly, under his successor--his grandson, Michael McCaskey. But this week they were back in the cave minus six of the starters who helped make the Bears what they were a year ago, a defensive power that played its way to within one game of the Super Bowl.

Of the missing, one, defensive end Dan Hampton, is hurt. Among the others, all bitterly disappointed with their paychecks, are the two best defensive Bears since Dick Butkus, linebacker Mike Singletary and safety Todd Bell. Also holding out are linebacker Al Harris, defensive tackle Steve McMichael, and offensive tackle Keith Van Horne.

Until Monday, the club had seven absentees but then nose tackle William (The Refrigerator) Perry, the No. 1 draft choice, signed.

Halas’ Chicago critics used to say it was his penny-pinching that converted the Bears into a .500 team. Have they started down that road again? Is McCaskey gambling with a franchise that seemed to have turned the corner last year?

“It isn’t a gamble,” he replied. “We’re taking a calculated risk. We’re trying to put in place a sounder, fairer system (of remuneration) based on handsome salaries for achievement instead of anticipation.”

Bell, for example, a fourth-round draft choice in 1981 from Ohio State, was underpaid at $77,000 last year. But the Bears think he would be overpaid if he gets what he wants this year, $950,000.

“Our goal is to be a consistent annual winner,” said McCaskey, a slender, graying man who at 41 looks good behind Halas’ big mahogany desk. “I’d remind you, though, that there’s no correlation between winning and wages. Six of the 10 playoff teams last year were in the league’s bottom half on payrolls.

“The year before, it was 7 of 10.”

McCaskey, a Yale graduate who holds an MBA from the Harvard Business School, said he has embarked on a campaign “to deliberately pay rookies a lot less” than they got last year when the NFL was competing with the USFL.

“You can’t buy the Super Bowl,” he said.

If true, that’s a good thing for him and his family because they are only modest millionaires.

Halas left about 80% of the Bears but not much else to his only surviving sibling, the former Virginia Halas, who is McCaskey’s mother. Her husband, Ed, is the club’s board chairman. The franchise is worth an estimated $75 million.

At Platteville, Wis., where the Bears are training, Coach Mike Ditka seems more worried than McCaskey by the large number of holdouts.

“If they don’t come in soon we’ll have to forget them and get (their replacements) ready,” Ditka said.

Defensive coordinator Buddy Ryan, however, is even less concerned than McCaskey, although it’s his department that has been hardest hit.

“Training camp is overrated for veterans,” said Ryan. “We don’t need these (holdouts) this month. If they’re back by Labor Day we’ll be all right. A vet only needs enough contact to get his shoulders in shape.”

Formerly an assistant to Bud Grant at Minnesota, Ryan is perhaps the most interesting of the modern Bears and, some say, the ablest. In the late 1970s he was the first member of the present staff hired by Halas, who later brought Ditka in with orders to keep Ryan.

As the developer of the league’s most unusual and most feared defense--a blitzing, attacking defense that intimidated and beat up the intimidating Raiders last season--Ryan is an unconventional theorist.

“Nobody’s job is ever safe in this defense,” he said when asked whether the holdouts or their replacements would be on the field later on. “On my team you have to earn your job over again all the time. We could be using two rookies at cornerback this year (No. 2 draft choice Reggie Phillips of SMU and free agent Ken Taylor of Oregon) or we could come back with our two veterans. If you’re the best man, the job’s yours, I don’t care if you’re a second draft choice, a first draft choice or the coach’s son.”

Without Singletary and Bell, the Bears, in Ryan’s opinion, would be about half the team they were last year.

“Every coach should be lucky enough to have a Singletary,” he said. “We don’t need Bell except at outside linebacker, inside linebacker, cornerback, free safety and strong safety. They’ll both be in one of these days, too. They’re too loyal not to come in.”

With last year’s defense, which came together behind the fierce play of defensive end Richard Dent, on the field intact, the Bears would be a Super Bowl contender. Quarterback Jim McMahon is back from injury, Walter Payton still is running the ball, Willie Gault still is speeding under long passes, and there is an improving young offensive line in which the rising star is Jim Covert.

Said Payton: “They’re not making me do the two-a-days this summer. I’m fresher.”

McMahon remains in the midst of all the work at Platteville but is being urged to cut back on his scrambling this year.

“I’ll only run on third and four,” promised the fiery young quarterback, who was knocked out for the season last November when he ran on third and four.

Most NFL coaches think he’s only whistling now. They think he learned a lesson trying to run on the Raiders--in the same sense that Dallas quarterback Roger Staubach wised up after losing a year when he took on Ram linebacker Mike McKeever.

“Roger didn’t run so much after that,” Coach Tom Landry recalled the other day.

Is Ditka a good enough coach to put the Bears in the Super Bowl? Chicago writers wonder about that.

“Ditka is a slow learner, but he’s learning,” said Don Pierson of the Tribune. “His biggest contribution is that he gets them to play hard.”

The Bears’ new president, McCaskey, a former college football player who lettered at split end, seems to agree.

“He’s learning and growing,” said McCaskey, who reluctantly gave Ditka a new three-year contract last year. “That’s all George Halas ever expected of anybody.”