Success Ruined Ditka the Coach

” There was a (magazine) poll of 200 NFL players who said the coaches they would least like to play for were, first, (Tom) Landry and, tied for second, Don Shula and me. I was flattered. What a great compliment. “ --Mike Ditka in his 1986 autobiography

I never liked Mike much.

But you know what?

1. He doesn’t care.

2. Bear fans don’t care.

3. I don’t even care.

Because most of us remember what it was like to watch the Chicago Bears before Mike Ditka became their coach.

They were boring.

They were losers.

They were nowhere.

I once watched a Chicago Bear team--with Walter Payton--gain 24 yards against Detroit in an entire game. Passing, rushing . . . I mean a total of 24 yards. The year was 1981, and the coach was Neill Armstrong. And it didn’t even snow.

I once watched a Chicago Bear team--with Gale Sayers and Dick Butkus--win one game the entire season while losing 13. The year was 1969 and the coach was Jim Dooley. Six times, that team was held to seven points or fewer. The Atlanta Falcons scored 48 points against that Bear team.

I once watched a Chicago Bear team lose to the Houston Oilers, 47-0. The year was 1977 and the coach was Jack Pardee. And that Bear team still made the playoffs--where it was beaten by the Dallas Cowboys, 37-7.

Oh, the Bear embarrassments.

Week after week, year after year, we watched them pile up. Tickets were fairly easy to get. Easier to get than Bear victories, anyway.

Not once from 1966 until 1977 did the Bears win more than seven games.

They had losing records in 1978, 1980, 1981 and 1982.

That was Ditka’s first year as coach, ’82. Shortly before his appointment, a former Chicago newspaper colleague of mine wrote a column that ran beneath a headline: “Hiring Ditka Would Be Madness.” He wrote of the coach’s well documented throwing of clipboards and tantrums. He called him “a creature of brute force, the quintessential Midway Monster, and such is not the stuff head coaches are made of.”

Well, he was a monster.

He was mean and crude and rude, and he trampled on people like Godzilla crossing a Tokyo train track.

He spilled bile and venom as often and as ugly as anything from an Alaskan oil tanker.

No, I didn’t like Ditka much.

But I don’t care.

Because Mike Ditka made the Chicago Bears proud again, and made their fans proud of them.

I can think of a hundred things Ditka did or said with which I disagreed, and the sportswriter in me would like to stand up and cheer at Tuesday’s news that he was fired as coach.

But I can’t.

Because I can separate the two feelings. Because I recognize what Ditka did for football in Chicago and for the league in general. He was nasty, he was nutty, he was salty. Ditka was a one-man band of drums and cymbals and accordion music who made some of the damnedest noise the NFL ever heard.

He was good for Chicago; he was bad for Chicago.

He got the Bears to a Super Bowl. Good. He took what could have been a dynasty and got it to only one Super Bowl. Bad.

He discovered Refrigerator Perry and put him to an unprecedented use. Good. He reduced and abandoned Refrigerator Perry, misusing and abusing him, never getting anything more out of him. Bad.

He gave Buddy Ryan the freedom to build a better defense and the credit for building it. Good. Then he got into a battle of wills that left Buddy looking for work elsewhere and left a great defense looking for guidance. Bad.

Said captain Mike Singletary, in an unauthorized biography of Ditka: “If you have a great team, you’ve got to have a strong coach, a coach who can keep a lid on things, who believes in what he says and says what he believes. We didn’t have that. (And) it started right after the Super Bowl.”

Ditka couldn’t see eye to eye with his quarterback, Jim McMahon, and let him go. He cut McMahon’s friend, receiver Ken Margerum, out of what teammates believed was spite. He acquired quarterback Doug Flutie and started him, prompting players to stand up in team meetings and scream, as Keith Van Horne once did: “What is this . . . ?”

He thought he could make do without Ryan. He thought he could make do without Wilber Marshall. He couldn’t.

Ditka was proud and headstrong. He was common and condescending. The son of a Pennsylvania steelworker, he would nevertheless refer to certain fans in the stands as “$100-a-week jerks, one of life’s losers,” as though income mattered. The son of a union organizer and official, Ditka made millions endorsing foreign-made automobiles.

He did as he pleased.

But he restored the reputation of the Chicago Bears, made them winners and made them watchable.

He isn’t my kind of guy.

But he’s my kind of coach.