IS AMERICA TIRED OF ALL THE BULL?

Overexposed? Yes, you could say the Chicago Bulls have been a little overexposed.

How about simultaneous pieces in the New Yorker (Michael Jordan says General Manager Jerry Krause thought he was “a piece of meat”), Fortune (Jordan’s economic impact measured at $10 billion) and Newsweek (Ron Harper says Jordan will retire), not to mention old standbys like Jordan’s 1,000th Sports Illustrated cover?

How about endless speculation about what Krause and Jerry Reinsdorf will do with Jordan, Phil Jackson, Scottie Pippen, Dennis Rodman, et al.?

How about Rodman, who just broke Joe DiMaggio’s record by doing something outrageous for 57 days in a row?

How about not being able to turn on your TV without seeing a Bull try to sell you something (Jordan has all the big deals but Scottie Pippen, gamely hanging in there, did Tuesday’s news conference wearing a cap displaying his latest sponsor).

How about enough already?

The Bulls still move merchandise and guarantee TV ratings--NBA officials hope to set a new record if this series goes six--and the international crowd is still ga-ga (you sense that watching a group of Hungarian reporters posing for pictures with each other in front of the Jordan statue outside the United Center).

In the rest of this country, however, the act may be getting old. There’s only anecdotal evidence, but if fans were polled as voters are, the Bulls might find, like a certain president, their negatives are rising.

“I think it’s about 70-30 with people who call my show, who want the Bulls to lose,” says Joe McDonnell of Los Angeles’ XTRA Sports 1150.

“People are tired of the whole story. They’re tired of finding out what Michael Jordan had for lunch.

“I think it’s timing. I think it’s cyclical with everybody. I’m sure that by 1988, people were ready to see the Lakers be through.”

Here, of course, the passion still runs undiluted and hot (you sense this from the banners outside the Art Institute; one says “James McNeill Whistler Lithography,” the other “Go Bulls”) and they don’t care for suggestions the Utah Jazz is a sentimental favorite or that people are rooting for Karl Malone the way they rooted for Denver’s John Elway in the Super Bowl.

They don’t know why David Letterman is bashing the Bulls regularly, but they don’t like it.

“If the number of fans that still greet them at the hotels, even when they’re just leaving to go to the game or arriving at the hotels means anything, nothing has changed,” says Neil Funk, the team’s play-by-play broadcaster.

“Even in Utah, I mean, there were probably 600-700 fans each time they left the hotel as a group. I really don’t sense that. To be honest with you, I think the media is looking for another spin to put on this thing, saying that people may be tired of it.

“Hey, let’s be honest. If this was Indiana and Utah playing, how much interest would there be in this series?”

Not much. Between the Pacers and Jazz, who would you root for or against? For many, that isn’t a problem now.

Even Dynasties Get the Blues

“I think anybody who’s impartial as an observer is probably pulling for the underdogs. [Laughing] Of course, I thought that was supposed to be us to start with but now, obviously, they’re in the underdog role. I think anybody who wasn’t a Bulls or Jazz fan was probably pulling for them, but that’s just human nature.”

“I know as a sports fan, I always pulled for the guy who hadn’t done it before.”

--Steve Kerr

Of course, this is the only real dynasty we’ve seen in a long time.

Out of convenience, or a need to bestow as many honors as possible upon winners’ brows, teams like the Dallas Cowboys, San Francisco 49ers and Lakers have been called “dynasties,” although none ever won three titles in a row. The Lakers, who won five titles in the ‘80s, were royalty, but it wasn’t quite the same thing.

Real dynasties--the New York Yankees, the Montreal Canadiens, the Boston Celtics--won year after boring year, crushing pretenders’ hopes annually, making romantic heroes of vanquished knights like Jerry West and the Brooklyn Dodgers, rubbing it in (remember that cigar?). Aside from fans in New York, Montreal and Boston, who wouldn’t have rooted against them?

But that was before we became a global village and ESPN arrived. In the ‘20s, ‘30s, ‘40s, ‘50s and ‘60s, there was only an unfocused general dislike of the dynasts, with few institutions where opinion could crystallize.

Now we have “SportsCenter” and talk radio.

The Bulls came to power, younger, with no tattoos, better vertical leaps and, of course, Jordan, handsome, graceful, high-flying Mike, playing the game on a level that had never been seen before.

He had epic battles with the Knicks in Gotham (and always won). Famous movie directors did his sneaker ads. He was magic. It was art. What was so hard to take about that?

Then he went away.

Today’s Bulls start with Jordan’s wrenching departure and--just short of two seasons later--his return, which was treated like a god coming down from Olympus.

Even when his playoff run ran aground and the Orlando Magic knocked them out in the second round, the excitement stayed, to be multiplied in the fall when the Bulls traded for the brazen Rodman.

Jordan, whom the league doted on, had nice cornered. Rodman, whom it hated, had that outlaw chic. Any way you looked at it, it was box office.

It stayed that way, even after Rodman, ending his first season in Chicago, head-butted a referee and published a best-selling, telling-on-Madonna autobiography.

The next season, he kicked a cameraman in the crotch and put out another book that didn’t sell as well.

He got by without major incident this season, although he seems to be trying to make up for it in little ones. In a tacit acknowledgment he isn’t as salable, he didn’t publish anything.

Guess it’s safe to take your kids back to the book store, huh?

Of course, as Rodman’s antics were winding down, the Reinsdorfian Follies were heating up so once again among the Bulls, it wasn’t so much Camelot as Times Square.

The Chicago Sun-Times’ Jay Mariotti, who once argued the Bulls had supplanted the declining, squabbling Cowboys as “America’s team,” has dropped that one.

“I do this radio show on weekends that goes nationally and that’s the sentiment I hear,” Mariotti says.

“I think people still love Jordan, but I think they’re getting sick of the controversies. It’s like anything else. They get sick of the same thing over and over. They’ve been bombarded with Michael, Dennis, all of this for so long. . . .

“Everyone says this has been a turbulent year. This has been a turbulent decade. It hasn’t been a year or two. It just doesn’t end. You’ve got to pick up every publication. Ron Harper says in Newsweek Michael’s retiring. Reinsdorf says to Baseball Weekly, if Pippen wants a long-term deal, he should take it. Pippen tells us that he’s scheduled this Last Dance Party--on the night of Game 7 in Utah! It’s just one thing after another. . . .

“It’s hard to appreciate what the Bulls do through all this nonsense.”

Oh Yes, Him

Seven years after winning his first title, Jordan is older and more experienced, but like the Eddie Murphy character in “Trading Places,” he’s a karate man, he wears his scars inside.

Outside, he still looks fabulous, plays fabulous and has now cornered the market on money.

The Bulls may no longer be as favorably perceived and Jordan may not jump as high but if this is aging, many people would like to do it his way.

“Michael Jordan would never turn unpopular,” says Jayson Williams of the New Jersey Nets. “Michael Jordan has been in the league, I don’t know, 13, 14 years. What amazes me the most about Michael Jordan is, I have been out with him a few times and in New York, New Jersey I’m large, but this guy is big. Really big, man. . . .

“It would be a sad day. You know, like you remember where you were when Elvis died. That’s what you’ll remember, where you were if he retired.

“ ‘Cause I’ll tell you something, when Michael Jordan retires, there’ll be a lot of problems because we have a lot of young talent, but Michael Jordan is something you can’t replace. He’s Jesus in tennis shoes.”

Jordan seems to be looking for a way to come back but nothing is guaranteed and that sad day may be at hand. These days, it’s part of the mystique: Take a last look because that’s just what it may be.

Imagine Chicago without a Bull dynasty. Or in other words, the way it was before.

It’s already getting ready. There is a new, strange mood of resignation. The hysteria isn’t as hysterical. All this is passing. This spring, next spring, but soon.

The day before Game 7 against the Pacers--potentially Jordan’s last--Tommy Williams, a WSCR talk show host, asked listeners whether they they’d rather see that or Game 7 of a Cubs-White Sox World Series.

Williams, arguing in favor of going to see Jordan, was besieged by callers who said they’d go see the Cubs.

Nothing lasts forever, even here, even if it seems like it already has.