Dump Ditka? You Make da Call

I know you know a few things about the Chicago Bears.

Such as:

1. They are coached by Mike Ditka--half-man, half-volcano.

2. They are playing some pretty sub-par football this season.

3. They are supported by very loyal fans who have been satirized on “Saturday Night Live” as pledging their everlasting love to Ditka and “da Bears.”

Maybe you think this fan thing is exaggerated.

Maybe you don’t think there are Bear fans who wake up in the morning and pledge allegiance to Ditka and the flag, for which they stand.

Maybe you haven’t heard about Jeff Grovak.

I don’t know what Jeff Grovak does for a living. I do know that he is 39 years old and has one of those Grovak, Grabowski, Butkus surnames that so many Real Bear Fans have.

(In case you don’t know, no Real Bear Fan is permitted to be named Rockefeller or Vanderbilt or DuBois. Only fans with tough-sounding names such as Novak or Jackson or Zorich or O’Bradovich can officially be Real Bear Fans. All others technically can only be Bear Fans. I believe this is in the city constitution.)

When the Bears were beating almost everybody back in the mid-’80s, emperor Ditka himself proclaimed his team “the Grabowskis.” He said they represented all those other Grabowskis out there in Bear Land, whatever their names were.

I, too, was once a Grabowski. I was a Grabowski before Ditka called his team the Grabowskis. I was one of those little cubs outside Chicago who watched the Bears play when their players actually included Mike Ditka, Dick Butkus and Jim Grabowski.

For years I sat there with everybody else, eating my sausage sandwiches and my onion rings and my spare ribs, freezing and waiting and freezing and waiting for the Bears to again be as good as they were back in 1963, back when they were champions of the NFL before there was anything called a Super Bowl.

Yes, I followed da Bears.

I was a Bear Fan. I wasn’t a Real Bear Fan--too soft a name. Hey, I did what I could.

But I was no Grovak.

I never spent $10,000 to prove how much I loved da Bears.

As you may know, Ditka--excuse me, Coach Ditka--has had a few stormy moments this season. By now you know that Coach Ditka has had some run-ins with the media.

(You also should know that if any one or two of Chicago’s several hundred journalists dares to annoy Coach Ditka, Coach Ditka will attribute this to the entire The Media, which has also become an American tradition in Washington, D.C., and Hollywood, Calif. Remember, never single out one or two people when you can blame an entire profession.)

The following quarter-page advertisement appeared in Chicago’s two major newspapers Sunday:

“I LIKE MIKE DITKA!” it began.

“It’s time for Ditka fans and supporters to speak out. I’m tired of all the media Ditka bashing.”

It goes on to say (and I have changed not a comma):

“Yelling at Jim Harbaugh or Kevin Butler wasn’t nice, but if you played sports, coaches tend to yell, it happens, but if you’re a man, you bounce back and learn from your mistakes. Harbaugh is a man--he’ll be OK. Butler is used to it. Ditka yelled a lot during the Super Bowl year, but they were winning, so he was excitable, now that they’re losing he’s nuts and should quit, he’s not happy--bull! I say that he just hates losing! How many of his old players talk bad of him? Not many, they like playing for him!”

Whoa. Take a breath there, Jeff.

The ad is 17 paragraphs long. It demands to know who these people are who dare criticize Coach Ditka and all he has done. It blasts a telephone poll conducted by one newspaper to see whether Bear Fans thought Ditka should quit.

And how does the ad end?

With Grovak’s own telephone poll.

That’s right. Real Bear Fan Grovak provides two 900 phone numbers ($1.79 per call) so that you out there, Bear Fans or Not Bear Fans, can have your say.

Your say being either:

“I like Mike Ditka and he should coach the Bears as long as he wants to (which we hope is a long time). We remember what Bear football was like when he wasn’t coaching here. 1-900-400-6281.”

Or: “Sorry, Ditka fan. I disagree and think he should retire immediately. 1-900-400-6282.”

Remember, that’s $1.79 a pop. Grovak estimates that he spent $2,000 to order these phone lines. He says: “I stand to lose a lot of money. But the only way I thought I’d get my story across was to buy a couple of ads.

“I’m doing it because everything you read about Ditka now is negative. He’s had a couple of bad years and they want to crucify the guy.”

Grovak says he will purchase another ad to reveal the results of the poll. He says AT&T; will tabulate the results.

So far, I’ve spent $5.37.