This story originally ran in the Chicago Tribune on Jan. 27, 1986.
NEW ORLEANS — It is a good thing Chicago is the city of the big shoulders. How else could it Bear up to the task of carrying an entire football team in a victory parade from here to eternity?
Sporting immortality is where the Chicago Bears are headed. They proved you can get there from New Orleans in a day trip.
With a 46-10 victory over the New England Patriots in Sunday’s Super Bowl XX at the Louisiana Superdome, the Bears also took the entire city on a long-awaited joyride. They found the way to get over the hump that had always overturned the civic bandwagon, littering the streets with broken dreams instead of confetti.
Twenty-three years have passed since the 1963 Bears won Chicago’s last title in a major professional sport. At last, the Second City can chant ‘We’re No. 1′ without fear of flying too high.
With only a few minutes — but no doubt — left in the game, the bitterly cold streets up north in Chicago began to fill with warm bodies and the sound of car horns. Fans across the city gravitated toward the Rush Street area, and once the game was over, auto traffic on the Near North Side was at a standstill. Pedestrian traffic was little better.
In the Loop, those who braved the frozen Daley Plaza danced in the cold as the “Super Bowl Shuffle” played larger than life on the giant screen behind them.
Bears' head coach Mike Ditka was speaking of them — and hundreds of thousands of other people like them, football players and fans alike — when he told his victory press conference that "A lot of dreams have been fulfilled, and a lot of frustrations have ended."
The Bears, once hoisted aloft, can simply put one foot on the Picasso, another on the Sears Tower and step right up to the Chicago cloud, where team founder George Halas will be waiting. Or they can go the route linebacker Mike Singletary has mapped out.
"I'm so happy," Singletary said, "I feel like I could jump on top of the Superdome."
Chicago can jump for joy, knowing the only thing that risks being overturned is the applecart that said professional football was supposed to be a serious game. Even the Super Bowl became no more than a laugh and an "arf" for the Grabowskis of the Midway.
"I'm supposed to be on top of the world," said quarterback Jim McMahon, "but I just feel like it's another ballgame."
As thousands of Chicagoans among the sellout crowd of 73,818 barked their encouragement, the Bears were able to turn the headline event on America's sporting program into just another dog-and-pony show. What other Super Bowl was followed by fans boogeying in stadium aisles as their team's music video was played on a giant screen above one end zone?
"I'll be doing a little shuffling myself tonight," McMahon said.
Superlatives will rain down on the Bears like the shredded paper the city has collected for Monday's parade in downtown Chicago. Yet Super Bowl XX can still be remembered as much for a rolling Refrigerator and a quarterback whose headbands unwittingly let us know what planet he is from.
"Pluto" read one of the headbands McMahon wore, to honor a friend with that nickname. Moving the proceedings to outer space seemed only fitting, because this football team is plainly out of this world.
Their "Star Wars" defense, also known as the "46," reduced the Patriots to puppy chow. The offense underlined the defense's contribution by putting the same magic number on the scoreboard. Added together, the Bears played like a million.
"Today history was set," Singletary said. "I think we're one of the best teams of all time."
They finished the season with an 18-1 record, matching the 1984 San Francisco 49ers for the second-best mark in league history. Only a loss to Miami kept them away from invincibility in the record books. Only a fool would dare deny their invincibility on the field.
This is a team for Chicago and a team for the ages.
"Defense is what makes Chicago teams," said defensive end Richard Dent, the Super Bowl's Most Valuable Player after forcing two fumbles and getting in on 1 1/2 of the team's 7 sacks. "If we're not one of the best teams of all time, I'd like to see the others."
"I don't think the 1963 defense, as good as it was, could stand up to these guys," said Ditka, an end on Chicago's last championship football team. The Bears set Super Bowl records for most points scored, biggest margin of victory and fewest yards allowed rushing. Seven yards is what New England gained on the ground.
"We're the best of all time," said Bears' safety Dave Duerson. "Just look at the total yards (408-123)."
The Bears also drove starting New England quarterback Tony Eason to the sidelines. "Neither injury nor sickness," said the official report on Eason, who had been suffering with an intestinal virus.
It was simply time for him to leave, because only a man with a strong stomach could bear to watch what Buddy Ryan's defense was doing to him.
New England's first six possessions, the ones with Eason at quarterback, gained zero, minus-10, minus-7, minus-5, minus-1 and minus-13 yards. By then, late in the second quarter, the score was 20-3 and Steve Grogan was being fed to Danimal and Ming the Merciless and the rest of the Junkyard Dogs.
“I was ready for Bourbon Street in the third quarter,” said Bears’ defensive tackle Steve McMichael.
"We made them look better than they are today," Grogan said.
Few could bear looking at the pounding Grogan took. The defensive highlights of this game are unsuitable for viewing by children. A Sam Peckinpah movie doesn't have as much violence.
"The Monsters of the Midway have really returned," said National Football League commissioner Pete Rozelle.
They came back in the guise of "Grabowskis," an ethnic identity created by Ditka as contrast to the waspy, button-down image projected by the NFL. They put a major appliance at running back and a headband case at quarterback and whistled a loony tune as they worked their way to the top of the heap.
Best of all, they refused to change their tune in either the week leading up to Super Bowl or the game itself.
William "the Refrigerator" Perry, the defensive tackle who landed on the nation’s consciousness with the full force of his 305 pounds, added another dimension to his ever-growing legend by trying a pass.
So what if Perry was sacked as he swept right? It was the first time in history a Refrigerator had rolled out without wheels.
Perry also was used as a decoy, sort of like sneaking a mouse by a cat, as McMahon carried for the first of his two touchdown runs. The Fridge got his chance to carry the load — himself and the football — on a 1-yard touchdown run in the third quarter.
Just think of that a minute. Walter Payton didn't score in the Super Bowl, but the Refrigerator did.
So did McMahon, making points for both the team and his esteem. He chose to wear a variety of headbands promoting worthy causes, including the Juvenile Diabetes Fund, POW-MIA, Children's Hospital, and United Way. His last,
"Pluto," was for his best friend, Dan Plater, whose football career was ended by a head injury.
McMahon wasn't entirely out of character, though. He played with the same gloves in the indoor arena that he had worn to combat the elements in the two playoff games at Soldier Field.
"It was fun in the huddle," McMahon said.
It was fun everywhere for the Bears. Reggie Phillips and Henry Waechter, both rarely-used reserves, made their way into the Super Bowl record book by, respectively, returning an interception for a touchdown and getting a safety. "This is great for Chicago fans," Ditka said. "They have been shellshocked for a number of years."
This time, only the opposition felt that way. New England saw stars. The Bears reached them.
