Mike Ditka drives a Bentley now instead of the 1962 Oldsmobile Starfire.
”I`ve still got the Olds. I haven`t even had the Bentley much. It`s in a garage somewhere. All it is is an investment,” he said.
He sells Pontiacs on TV and also drives a Mercedes.
He wears $800 suits instead of $20 slacks and sweatshirts.
”The suit? I think it might be good, because I`ve got other people doing it, like Dan Reeves. I`ve got John Mackovic in a tie,” he said.
He owns a restaurant now instead of trying to own one, like he did once in Dallas.
”It`s an investment, too, and a very good one,” he said. ”I guess I shouldn`t let it out that I bought some $50 gold pieces. That`s an
investment.”
Cowboy boots can wait, he said. So can Dallas, where Ditka is often talked about as the heir apparent to Tom Landry.
”No way. You don`t follow legends anywhere and have much success,”
Ditka said.
Sounds exactly like the kind of challenge Ditka would love. He doesn`t like anyone to tell him no, not even himself.
”No, I wouldn`t go there. I`m not Dallas; I`m really not,” he said.
The Bears have won 39 regular-season games in the last three years. Don Shula`s Miami Dolphins won 38 in 1983-85, but nobody had won 39 in any three years. The National Football League started playing 16-game schedules in 1978. Speaking of legends, Ditka`s 50-23 regular-season winning percentage of .685 now surpasses the Bears` record of .672 (320-148-31) set by George Halas.
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Any way Ditka is sliced by media, fans or players, he is doing the only thing that matters in pro coaching.
He is also having fun, as anyone can tell by the grit of his teeth.
”I really am,” he said. ”It`s been a struggle this year, but a fun kind of struggle. It`s still serious business to me because it`s my job and I want to win as much as I can. But I`m having fun. I don`t think I`ve been uptight. I get ticked off on the sidelines. But off the field, I haven`t exploded.”
As for the ”personality change” he foisted on reporters around midseason: ”I was just jerking you guys around.”
When his secretary, Mary Albright, told him she didn`t like his new personality, he said: ”There`s only two: Jekyll and Hyde. There is no third personality.”
As for theories that he has hit the big time and is on his way to Big D, both Jekyll and Hyde insist the answer is no.
”If people look at the suits and cars instead of looking at me and what we`re doing and what we`ve accomplished, those kind of people I wouldn`t waste the time to explain it to them,” Ditka said.
Ditka isn`t apologizing for the trappings of success, nor is he confusing them with success itself.
”These things are a by-product of winning. It`s the same with Tom Landry. After 25 years of coaching, he`s a millionaire. Same with Don Shula. He`s a millionaire. Bill Walsh. They`re all by-products of winning,” Ditka said.
”I`ve been fortunate, but how fortunate would I have been if I was 2-14? I would have been run out of here on a rail.”
Other than winning, Ditka insists he`s the same old jerk.
”Ain`t no difference. Like (Cowboy president) Tex Schramm said, `You can`t make a silk purse out of a sow`s ear.` I don`t care if I put on a tuxedo. If nothing has come across in all this time, it`s that I`m a Bear and this is my kind of town.
”I can walk up to any steelworker or any garbage collector in the country and I can sit down and talk life with them. I don`t care if I`ve got a pair of Gucci shoes on or I`ve got a pair of clodhoppers on.
”I can go into any tavern in the city of Chicago, sit down and have a beer with a guy, and be Joe Blow.
”It`s a little hard to do right now, but I can do it.”
Ditka says he and his team are still more ”Grabowski” than ”Smith.”
”Grabowski, but the bowling shirts are going more toward Givenchy,” he explained.
What propels Ditka more than anything else is the lingering disbelief. Despite the success, there are people still waiting for him to fail.
From the hecklers in Green Bay and Cincinnati to the media to his own players, he gets flack. He immediately turns it into ammunition. Passive he ain`t, not coincidentally like his football team.
”After the Houston game, when I said we didn`t play good (in a 20-7 victory), the media got upset. Thought I was too hard on them,” he said.
”I said exactly what happened. We weren`t playing good. If you`re a championship team and play to the other team`s level, that`s what gets you beat.
”That fourth quarter in Detroit two weeks ago, it didn`t matter if it was the New York Giants that day, we would have moved the ball because we started playing at our level.
”My job is to pat on the back and kick in the butt. I`m not fooling anybody on this team. They know what my priorities are. And the only reason I`m doing it is because I love to win.”
The flap over violence in Weeks 12 and 13, when Green Bay`s Charles Martin and the Bears` Otis Wilson were suspended, confused Ditka as much as it disturbed him. Violence is necessary to football even though it is occasionally and unfortunately evil.
”This is a winning business. If you want to win and somebody`s in the way, you have to get them out of the way. You could ask them to move, I guess,” he said.
Ditka might have done one thing differently this year, he said. He might have communicated better with Jim McMahon, or made it more conducive for McMahon to communicate with him. It probably wouldn`t have saved the quarterback`s shoulder, but it would have saved a whole lot of silliness.
”Because of things that were done and said, it took a long time to really sit down and talk. Once we did, there was no problem at all,” Ditka said.
”Everybody needs a little reinforcement once in a while. Sometimes it`s my fault. You get two stubborn people involved and you forget what the heck you`re doing. You say, `I`m going to be as stubborn as him` or he says the same about you and then nobody`s talking. It gets stupid.”
It gets more stupid when outsiders assume Ditka wants to get rid of McMahon once and for all.
”Nobody respects Jim as a player more than I do,” Ditka said. ”I guess everybody needs to be told that every once in a while. I just know how much better a football team we are with him healthy and playing.”
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Another thing people forget is that McMahon was hurt in the season opener, not three weeks ago. McMahon was never the same after Sept. 7, and the prolonged strain caused by that injury affected both player and coach.
When McMahon criticized Ditka`s acquisition of Doug Flutie, it was ”the one thing, the one week of turmoil” that bugged Ditka more than anything else this year.
”We`re all lucky to be doing what we`re doing. When somebody tries to do my job, that aggravates me. I don`t try to do their job. If this was their job, they`d treat it the same way,” Ditka said.
”That didn`t bother me that much, really. I just wanted to make it clear to the team that I`m going to call the shots until they get rid of me. When they get rid of me, they can get somebody else to call them.”
And when they get rid of him, he insists his mail won`t reach him in Dallas.
”If Dallas is smart, which I`m sure they will be, they`ll bring in someone different and new and get after it,” Ditka said.
And why wouldn`t that be Ditka?
”I`m not Dallas. I`m Chicago, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Cleveland, teams like that. I spent a great part of my life in Dallas and enjoyed every minute. It was so important, it was unbelievable. But it`s not me now. That`s for somebody else. They have very capable people who would be able to handle that job. I don`t think Dan (Reeves) would go, but Dan could handle it. Mackovic could handle it. People like that. They`ve got the polish.
”I`m not going anywhere and they aren`t going to come to me,” Ditka said, smoothly.