The Reason Why

I was born in Chicago, my family has lived in Indy for 30 years. The Colts have been here twenty-something. Why am I a bears fan, tradition and loyalty. I am Catholic, still an active alumni of my fraternity and despise domes/astrograss anything. I could give you long list of beliefs that could be humbled by Crash Davis in Bull Durham.
Friday, a fellow teacher tried to get me to bet on the game. He's a season ticket holder for the Colts and a good kid. But I couldn't take his money. This is not a game to be wager by the likes of me. If you need to wager on what you believe in, you have no faith. The following article I found in at the Chicago Tribune and it sums it up:
Bears' growth woven into Windy City's fabric

By Don Pierson Tribune pro football reporter
February 3, 2007, 10:19 PM CST

In Chicago, the Bears win every year whether they win or not. Their grip on the city spans generations and cultures, endures disappointments, and celebrates triumphs great and small.

Professional football was practically born in Chicago, nurtured by George Halas through the Depression and a world war until it not only caught baseball but surpassed everything on the sports landscape.

Unlike the White Sox and Cubs, whose fans find it agonizing to embrace each other even through a rare World Series victory, the Bears unite the city. It took six basketball titles for the upstart Bulls to join a parade that the Bears lead, even through years of failure.

Once upon a time, there were the Chicago Cardinals, and before that the Racine Cardinals, who preceded Halas' Bears onto the fledgling pro football scene.

Halas, however, not only was born and raised in Chicago, he became Chicago, and his Bears, named after his boyhood favorite Cubs, soon captured the imagination of a city that was growing as fast as the sport.

Pro football's roots are in the coal mines and steel mills, where men with broad shoulders and thick wrists found common ground with the work ethic of small towns and farms. When the sport moved to America's big cities, it quickly appealed to ethnic populations who could relate to the adversity and hard labor indigenous to every single football game ever played.

The game was made for Chicago, in Chicago, by a Chicagoan.

"My wife likes to tell me everything starts in the Midwest," said NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, whose wife, Jane, daughter of former U.S. Transportation Secretary Sam Skinner, is a Chicagoan.

Halas represented the Decatur Staleys when he traveled to Canton, Ohio, in 1920 to organize the forerunner of the NFL. He moved the franchise to Chicago in 1921 and it became the Bears in 1922.

Halas signed University of Illinois star Red Grange from Wheaton to go on a 1925 national tour that helped promote pro football from New York City to Los Angeles.

In 1932, the NFL's first playoff game was between the Bears and Portsmouth Spartans on an 80-yard field at Chicago Stadium. The game was moved indoors because of snow, and the Bears won when Bronko Nagurski threw a 2-yard touchdown pass to Grange.

In attendance was Halas' only daughter, 9-year-old Virginia, who became the matriarch of the McCaskey family that now owns the franchise, keepers of a unique heritage.

In 1934, the Tribune sponsored the first College All-Star Game between the NFL champions and college stars. The Bears were held to a scoreless tie in the inaugural game, starting a tradition that lasted until 1976 and strengthened Chicago's bond with pro football.

The Bears became the Monsters of the Midway by dominating the sport with four NFL titles in the 1940s, starting with a 73-0 championship victory over Washington that reverberates to this day by popularizing the T-formation that is still the foundation for modern offenses.

The next year, "Bear Down, Chicago Bears," was written by Al Hoffman, who also wrote, "If I Knew You Were Coming, I'd Have Baked a Cake." Never have so many Bears fans learned and sung the words as this season, when they were displayed on Soldier Field video screens after every score.

Despite seven winning seasons in the 1950s, the Bears reached only one championship game, in 1956, when Paddy Driscoll had taken over coaching duties from Halas for two seasons.

After Halas returned, he coached one more title team in 1963, a team that included tight end Mike Ditka. After Halas traded Ditka and left the sidelines himself at 73 because of a bad hip, the team declined until Halas' son, George "Mugs" Halas, hired Jim Finks as general manager in 1975 "to run the show."

When Halas brought back Ditka to coach a team loaded with talent drafted by Finks, the Bears of the 1980s rekindled the city's passion into a full-blown love affair.

The Super Bowl champions of the 1985 season were like the Grange tour in boosting nationwide popularity.

It was a team that literally grabbed microphones and rode a wave of media attention that is still cresting. In their primitive efforts to record a slick, ground-breaking video, they still looked like Ditka's "Grabowskis" in the "Super Bowl Shuffle."

The 1990s tested the devotion of even their most ardent fans until Ed and Virginia McCaskey reorganized and once again allowed outsiders Ted Phillips and Jerry Angelo "to run the show." Like it or not, the rebuilt Soldier Field is testimony to the team's status in civic affairs.

Throughout the decades, the Bears' style of play has matched the style of the city—tough, cold, fundamental, relentless. It's a style distinguished by defense and middle linebackers, running backs and linemen, and only an occasional quarterback capable of navigating the Windy City.

They are coached by a man named Lovie now, which seems incongruous in a tradition of Bronkos and Bulldogs and Butkuses. But Lovie Smith's unpretentious, small-town, Big Sandy, Texas, drawl and his no-nonsense, hard-hitting, straight-shooting, blue-collar philosophy of football and life seems to fit Chicago just perfectly.

None of this changes if the Bears lose today, life goes on. The Colts are a classy team and led by one of the best men in football, Tony Dungy. And to those who ask if I love the Bears so much why don't I move there? Honestly, I hate traffic.
Bears win: 38 to 21