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Mike Ditka Feuded With Players, Fans and Rivals, and Chicago Loved Da Coach for All of It

Mike Ditka left an imprint on Chicago sports unparalleled as a personality, a Hall of Fame player, and head coach who helped win a championship in a legendary fashion.
Gene Chamberlain|
Mike Ditka, coach of the 1985 champions, has died. Ditka and his quarterback, Jim McMahon, had a "strange and wonderful relationship."
Mike Ditka, coach of the 1985 champions, has died. Ditka and his quarterback, Jim McMahon, had a "strange and wonderful relationship." | IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect

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Chicago Bears


George Halas was the founder and coach of the Bears, but Mike Ditka was a real Bear.

The colorful coach and Chicago tight end who embodied the toughness and gritty attitude for which the franchise became known, died at the age of 86 on Friday.

Perhaps it is ironic and fitting that Ditka would pass away only days before the Bears renew their rivalry against their biggest rival, the Green Bay Packers, a team Ditka loved to beat. The exact same scenario happened when the franchise's best player, Walter Payton, died in 1999.

Da Coach, as he became known to all, played for the team as a Hall of Fame tight end from 1961-66 under Halas, then led them to their only Super Bowl after returning to Chicago following a stint as a Cowboys assistant coach under Tom Landry. Ditka was fired by team president Michael McCaskey in January of 1993 after a run that included a record of 106-62, NFC Central championships in 1984, '85, '86, '87, '88, '90 and another playoff berth in 1991 as a wild card. Of course, this included the fabled 1985 run to Super Bowl XX, when the Bears went 18-1 and crushed New England 46-10 for the title.

Ditka's return to the team he played for as head coach in 1982 was controversial, as defensive coordinator Buddy Ryan had been the coach many players supported for the job. But Halas kept Ryan on under Ditka at the players' urging and a real tension ensued between the two throughout the four seasons they were together. Although, after both retired and had been out of the game the respect they had for each other was also made known.

Ditka was Da Coach from the moment he walked in the door.

"Give me three years, and if you walk with me, we'll get to the dance," Ditka was said to have promised players when he arrived. He also told them at the same time most of them would not be with the team when they would win the Super Bowl.

Ditka made good on his pledge after restoring discipline and the work ethic required. At the same time, he brought along an ego and it rubbed plenty the wrong way. He feuded with the media, and often his own players. Sometimes it was good-natured, other times not so much. He hollered at Packers fans during a press conference, threw a big wad of gum at 49ers fans, and was loved by Bears fans. His argument with "Neal of Northlake" on WSCR was played regularly over and over in Chicago for years.

Maybe Ditka's best quote ever about his relationship with anyone was about eccentric quarterback Jim McMahon, who he always seemed at odds with but whose skillset was essential.

"We have a strange and wonderful relationship," Ditka once said. "He's strange and I'm wonderful."

Ditka was born in Carnegie, Pennsylvania, on Oct. 18, 1939, as Michael Keller Dyczko, and the family later changed their name to Ditka. As he grew up in Aliquippa, Pa., a hotbed of football, Ditka stood out in several sports, went to Pitt and played two ways as an end and defensive end. He basically pioneered the position of tight end with the Bears as Halas loved his blocking and receiving ability and wanted to see both utilized with flanker Johnny Morris' receiving skills. Ditka made the Pro Bowl five straight years to start his career, caught 56 passes for 1,076 yards and 12 touchdowns as a rookie and helped lead them to the 1963 NFL championship.

They traded him to Philadelphia after a dispute over money and production. He famously said Halas "threw nickels around like manhole covers." And at that point in his career he has admitted he had a drinking problem, as well. Ditka later played for the Cowboys in a Super Bowl. He finished with 427 catches for 5,812 yards and 43 TDs. He won a Super Bowl ring with Dallas in the 1971 season and played in another in the 1970 season.

When Halas brought Ditka back to Chicago, he handled such a wide array of personalities that his job almost seemed more like a warden than a coach. Ditka's view of Walter Payton, though, was a bit above the rest and he considered Payton a special talent.

"When God said he would make a halfback or fullback, he might have said Gale Sayers or he might have said Jim Brown," Ditka said of Payton. "But when he said he would make the best football player who ever lived, he probably said two men: Jim Thorpe and Walter Payton."

Ditka was known as "Iron Mike," for good reason, and not all of it because of his powerful playing style. He coached them to a win a little over a week after he had a heart attack in 1988.

He often was accused of bullying other teams, coaches and even some of his own players in a sport where it was not necessarily a negative. He had a running feud with Packers coach Forrest Gregg from the time Gregg arrived as coach in 1984. Gregg was actually a former Cowboys teammate of his.

Ditka went 7-1 against Gregg's Packers, including one of his great tactical moves: The birth of William "The Refrigerator" Perry.

The 300-pound defensive lineman wasn't getting played much by Ryan, who rarely found use for any rookie. So Ditka, angered that 49ers coach Bill Walsh had used a guard as fullback against the Bears in the 1984 NFC championship game, decided to do the same with Perry in 1985 at the end of the Bears' convincing 26-10 win at San Francisco. The next week, he took his feud with Gregg to another level and unleashed the Fridge as a ball carrier against the Packers in a 23-7 win and later as a receiver in Green Bay for a TD catch in a 16-10 win. Finally, he had Perry carry for a TD in the Super Bowl, but Payton didn't get to score a TD after a long career of servitude as the only shining light for plenty of losing Bears teams. Ditka later admitted he made a big mistake there.

"I didn't even think of it," he said about getting Payton a TD.

The moody Ditka was the ideal person to coach a group of divergent personalities because of his own personality. McMahon once nicknamed him Sybil, after a book about a woman with multiple personality traits.

“It was more than a team,” Ditka said about his Bears. “It was a team of characters that had character that played for a crazy man, who let him be crazy and had fun doing it and don’t apologize for it ever."

After his firing in Chicago, Ditka went into media and then took over as Saints coach. There, he inherited a terrible franchise and helped make it worse by trading away his entire draft class for running back Ricky Williams. Ditka had been 106-62 as Bears coach but with the Saints he was 15-33 and lasted three seasons until Tom Benson fired him.

Ditka used his celebrity status well after football, going into movies, television and also sportscasting. He was a longtime contributor on ESPN's pregame.

The Bears honored Ditka by retiring his jersey No. 89 in 2013. He is survived by his wife Diana and their children, Mark, Matt, Mike and Megan.


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Published
Gene Chamberlain
GENE CHAMBERLAIN

Gene Chamberlain has covered the Chicago Bears full time as a beat writer since 1994 and prior to this on a part-time basis for 10 years. He covered the Bears as a beat writer for Suburban Chicago Newspapers, the Daily Southtown, Copley News Service and has been a contributor for the Daily Herald, the Associated Press, Bear Report, CBS Sports.com and The Sporting News. He also has worked a prep sports writer for Tribune Newspapers and Sun-Times newspapers.

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