Performer: Genesis
Songwriters: Tony Banks, Phil Collins, Peter Gabriel, Steve
Hackett, Mike Rutherford
Original Release: Selling England By the Pound
Year: 1973
Definitive Version: You’ll Love Us Live, 1980
Although I’m a huge baseball
fan, I’m not much of a football fan—pro football anyway. That hasn’t always
been true.
When I was a kid, I liked
the Los Angeles Rams. I’m pretty sure I chose them because a bunch of the first
football cards I ever had, from the glorious 1971 set, were Rams players. (As
an aside, the Rams cards from that set are awesome. Most players making gloriously
hokey old-school poses. Check out the Jack Snow in particular.)
That affiliation changed in
the Eighties. In Columbus, Ohio, we were fed a steady diet of Cincinnati
Bengals and Cleveland Browns games on TV, but for whatever reason, I didn’t
gravitate to those teams. When I started going to Wabash, the local TV team was
the Chicago Bears. (Remember, this was before the Colts hightailed it out of
Baltimore.)
Well, I loved Walter
Payton—who didn’t?—and Dick Butkus was my favorite player when I was a kid.
Then the Bears drafted Jim McMahon, a fave while at BYU. Because Bears games
were on every weekend (Tim Ryan and Johnny Morris back in the day), it was a
natural thing to root for the Bears. My timing was perfect, because when 1985
rolled around, no one accused me of being a bandwagon-jumper.
I’ve said that the 1999
Cincinnati Reds were my all-time favorite baseball team. The 1985 Chicago Bears
were my all-time favorite team, period. I never had more fun following a team
than that team, with the possible exception of the 1986 Bears, which was, of
course, after I moved to Chicago and could take in the entire experience.
I suppose if you were a fan
of a team the Bears beat up on or you got sick of hearing about them, you hated
the 1985 Bears. Otherwise how could you? They were characters who made the game
fun to watch, and they coached by the biggest character of them all. Come on,
William Refrigerator Perry running the ball, catching the ball and trying to
carry Payton into the end zone that one time? McMahon and his nutty headbands?
Ditka’s insane press conferences? The Super Bowl Shuffle?
I watched every minute of
every game that year. The 1985 season was the culmination of something you
could see coming. 1983 was the first sign, when they won five of their last six
games. They rolled to the NFC championship game in 1984, and expectations were
really high going into 1985. You just KNEW they were going to be good. We just
didn’t know HOW good.
I would argue that the 1985
Bears were the greatest NFL team of all time, despite the one blemish on a
freakish night in Miami. (As someone once said, if you throw a pass that
bounces off a defender’s helmet into the arms of a receiver and it goes for a
touchdown, as Dan Marino and the Dolphins did that Monday night, you know it’s
not your night.)
They also delivered my
all-time favorite game result. Just as I grew up loving the Rams, I hated,
repeat, HATED, all caps, the Dallas Cowboys who always seemed to beat up my
beloved Rams when it counted. The 1985 Bears made up for all that and then some
in Dallas, pulverizing the Cowboys in a way no one had before in my lifetime.
The Sports Illustrated cover the next week said it all: 44-0. The only way it
could have been better would have been if the cover read 100-0.
As with my music, I got
Scott into the Bears in a big way, and we’d have phone conversations about the
games each week. He bought The Superbowl Shuffle as soon as it came out.
We finally got to watch a
game together during Christmas break. It was the last regular-season game of
the year, in Detroit, and I remember distinctly that Scott had just bought
You’ll Love Us Live and was playing it for me in his underground lair (the
aforementioned B--- Off Room). The version of this song, with the well-miched
crowd in the background and Phil’s tom solo, particularly stuck with me that
day.
The other thing that stuck
with me was one play in an otherwise sloppy but certain rout of the Lions: Late
in the game, the Lions had the ball deep in Bears territory when they fumbled.
In one motion, the Fridge leaped over a fallen player, picked up the ball and
rumbled off to the end zone … 80 yards away.
As soon as the play
happened, I started jumping up and down, yelling, “No way! No way!” in joyful
disbelief. I mean there was NO WAY Perry was going to run it all the way back.
His season was already legendary enough as is.
Of course, Perry didn’t: He
was tackled at about the Lions 20, but it was another awesome moment during my
favorite sports season of all-time.
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