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slingshot. Ditka didn’t care. All he wanted was to win.
    Platteville is Platteville, you know what I mean? The first couple years we’d played in Lake Forest, and there were too many kids and mothers and all that around. Hangers-on everywhere. I thought we could bond better up in the boondocks. I know the guys went out at night. They had fun, and that was okay. They weren’t a bunch of saints. John Madden used to have a coaching philosophy that went like this: be on time, pay attention, and play like hell. And that pretty much sums it up. I know Van Hornealmost killed himself on that scooter, but when I was playing, I remember we were running across a field trying to get away from the cops who were chasing us, and a couple of the guys tripped over wires strung between two posts and almost broke their legs in half. That’s football. There’s a time to play and a time to have fun. If it’s all drudgery, I don’t think you can win. I mean, these guys aren’t wimps. They are who they are. Even a stoic guy like Tom Landry, my coach when I was in Dallas, let guys have fun. Actually, he didn’t know what guys were doing. He could have known, but he didn’t want to know. That’s a choice. That was “America’s Team” with this clean-cut image. But the things guys were doing were off the charts. Still, we showed up every day, practiced our butts off, and played like hell on Sundays. That’s what I wanted from my guys.
    “Coach, who are you kidding? My philosophy is exactly the same as yours. My philosophy is to make the Bears something special, and to kick people’s asses!”
    —Ditka to George Halas
    Looking back at all these clippings from 1985, I can see that we were like a three-ring circus. There was something going on every day. I didn’t read the papers back then, so I had no idea how nuts things were. But I know I tried to deflect some of the attention onto me, because I didn’t want the players under any pressure except to go out and play. If the press thought I was an ass, fine. Didn’t bother me. I was on a mission from the moment I took the job.
    And the success could have happened sooner. I blew the first game I coached in 1982, up there in Detroit, by not scoring from the 1-yard line, twice! It made me feel bad, but it made Mr. Halas feel a hell of a lot worse. And I wanted to please him. I wanted him to know I was worthy and a Bear through and through.
    My first week as coach I gathered everybody together and said, “This is going to be a good news-bad news announcement. The good news iswe are going to win the Super Bowl. The bad news is a lot of you who don’t care enough aren’t going to be with us when it happens.” I meant that. We had a lot of selfish guys back in 1982, but I knew the Fenciks and Paytons and Suheys and Hamptons would be with me.
    See, George Halas embodied the Bears, and I wanted to embody them, too. Not many people know this, but in 1978 I wrote Mr. Halas a letter. I was the special teams coach for the Cowboys, and I was no big deal. Maybe I was a little wild. But what I said in the letter was, “We didn’t part on the best of terms when you traded me, but I would love to come back some day, back to Chicago, and be the head coach. I’m not ready yet, but I will be some day. I’ll bring back Chicago Bears tradition and pride. I promise.”
    Sid Luckman, the great old Bears quarterback, told me Halas always kept that letter. Sid and Mr. Halas were best friends. See, for me, it was the Bears only. I wanted nothing else. It was my ultimate goal. Just the Bears. That and winning the Super Bowl.
    A few years went by, and then after the Cowboys lost to the 49ers in the 1981 playoffs, a really tough game where Dwight Clark made that great catch from Montana in the end zone, Coach Landry called me into his office.
    “There’s somebody who wants to talk to you,” he said.
    “Who?” I asked.
    “George Halas of the Bears.”
    It excited the hell out of me. Tom gave me his