The 1985 Bears — man, what a story! But does it ever end?
In 2010 near Phoenix, I interviewed Jim McMahon for a story marking the 25th anniversary of the Super Bowl-winning 1985 Bears. It was pre-Sun-Times for me but same-old, same-old for the Punky QB.
“It’s been 25 years and we’re still talking about this [bleep],” he said then.
I reminded McMahon of that Thursday night at the Hard Rock Casino in Rockford, where, on the precipice of Super Bowl 60, he regaled an auditorium crowd of several hundred Bears fans, most of them around his age — he’s 66 — or older, with familiar anecdotes about Super Bowl 20.
You’ll never believe what he said:
“I guess it’s been 40 years and we’re still talking about this [bleep].”
About his “Super Bowl Shuffle” dancing (“You didn’t see me on ‘Soul Train,’ did you?”), about losing a Best R&B Performance Grammy to Prince (“How do you lose to Prince? Come on”), about golfing with Michael Jordan (“Did you know he liked to gamble?”), about butting heads with Mike Ditka (“I told him, ‘You don’t know what the hell you’re doing’ ”), about limping through life in a body that hasn’t felt right in forever (“That’s why they make beer”).
Laugh lines, all, delivered with ease as though he’s been using them for decades, which, of course, he has been. The crowd ate it up.
“People still like to talk about it,” McMahon said, “and until the Bears win another Super Bowl, ’85 is what they’re going to talk about.”
Is that true? It might be. Chicago has loved the ’85 Bears for so long, the whole thing is far past the point of becoming a caricature of itself.
On the other hand, perhaps that old team is merely entering the dustbin of history slowly, one speck at a time. And perhaps the current Bears are hitting fast-forward on that process. There’s nothing like a Super Bowl champion, but probably somewhere close to half the fans who reveled in the 2025 Bears’ division-winning success weren’t alive or old enough to have witnessed the Shufflin’ Crew. And how often, since all the way back then, have the Bears had as much excitement and momentum around them as they have now with Ben Johnson, Caleb Williams and a fan base aflame with interest?
Were the 2025 Bears the most well-liked Bears team since the ’80s?
“I think they were,” Hall of Fame Bears lineman Dan Hampton said. “I agree with that. The other teams, they just weren’t as well liked as this one. This team was a dynamic group that played — almost to the hilt — the underdog, come-from-behind, never-say-die character that everybody grows up loving. Those are the kinds of things that catch fire.”
The fire raged hottest and widest in ’85, though. There’s no disputing that.
“We were the greatest thing since sliced bread,” Hampton said. “For a time, the Second City was not second. It was pre-eminent.”
While McMahon sipped a tall beer and told stories, Hampton and his band, the Chicago 6, were getting ready to perform a few hundred feet away on a casino stage. Once upon a time, the band included Walter Payton on drums, Dave Duerson contributing vocals and, of course, Steve McMichael looming extra-extra-large. Alas, there would be no Bears onstage with “Danimal” this time as he slapped his bass and belted out the same old songs.
He felt the absence of teammates gone.
“You have no idea,” he said. “No idea.”
But he sang “Another Ditka Bad Call,” which he wrote with McMichael to the tune of Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall.” You can hear it already, can’t you?
“Hey! Ditka! Leave those Bears alone!”
And he sang “The Baddest Team Alive,” which he wrote with inspiration from Otis Wilson, another teammate who has sung with the band many times.
“We were the baddest, the baddest team alive / When the final gun was fired, no team could survive.”
Around 200 Bears fans, most of them in jerseys — lots of 9s and 99s, of course — took in the music, bobbing their heads in the slight, yet unmistakable, manner of humans whose wild days are behind them. A pair of white-haired women Hampton ballparked at 80 years old wore his No. 99 as they smiled and told him, “We used to come to practice!”
Sweet, isn’t it?
Back in the auditorium, a painting of a jersey-clad Bear was auctioned off for $1,000 and one of McMahon — depicted in uniform, wearing dark shades and an orange Bears cap — for $1,400. A framed Payton jersey went for $4,000. The proceeds were for the Rockford Park District to use on youth sports, which is important and wonderful.
Yes, there are more drops to be squeezed out of the mind-blowing experience that was the ’85 Bears.
How many more? Your guess is as good as mine.
“I know [Bears fans] are excited now because they’ve got a team they can get excited about, but until they win the Super Bowl, what do you have? What do you have to look back on?" McMahon said. "Until they win again, it’s going to be these kinds of memories for us.”