CHICAGO – There was that mustache, of course, impervious and impenetrable, and immovable. And the sweater vest, stretched across that barrel chest, covering all but a snippet of his tie as he prowled the sidelines in that Chicago cold.
There was the growl, the bark, the stare, the cigars – lots of cigars. Later, there were sausages and wine and restaurants, and they thrived with his name affixed to them.
And when "Saturday Night Live" rolled its "Da Bears" skit and argued that he'd beat a hurricane, well, what was left for Mike Ditka to accomplish?
The legendary coach died Friday, Oct. 9. He was 86.
He won championships as a tight end with the Bears (1963) and the Dallas Cowboys (1971) and a Super Bowl (1985) as a coach of the Bears. He was the first
tight end inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame and a long-time NFL analyst on Sundays.
He was football.
He was its ideal, and all he ever had to be was himself.
He famously fought with his players when he coached that iconic Bears team, especially his quarterback, Jim McMahon, and he battled with his defensive coordinator, Buddy Ryan, who later took over the Philadelphia Eagles.
The 1985 Bears remain the most memorable team in NFL history because of its Hall-of-Fame talent and its defense and its 15-1 romp to the Super Bowl, where it stomped the Patriots, 46-10, but mostly because of its characters.
Walter Payton and Richard Dent and Mike Singletary and Steve McMichael and Dan Hampton and Dave Duerson and Willie Gault and, of course, McMahon remain household names for anyone old enough to remember that team.
Or for anyone who has access to YouTube.
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And yet Dikta was the biggest star of them all.
He made commercials and movies – playing himself, obviously – and once posed in a tuxedo next to running back Ricky Williams, who was dressed in a wedding gown. The magazine cover was meant to playfully convey a "marriage" after the New Orleans Saints, whom Dikta was coaching, traded eight picks, including two first-rounders, to move up in the draft to select Wiliams.
The move didn't work, and Dikta didn't last in the Big Easy. It didn't matter. He was Ditka with a hard "K," a two-syllable enjoinder that defined the NFL for a couple of generations, a symbol of a fading era, an icon who could poke at himself – and did, a transcendent figure who earned the nickname "Iron Mike" but didn't need it.
And never did.
Contact Shawn Windsor: swindsor@freepress.com. Follow him @shawnwindsor.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Mike Ditka was an icon and symbol of a fading era
