Yes, just in case you wondered, Mike Ditka can still talk about football. Dressed in varying shades of gray, perhaps to emphasize his subdued mode, the (at last glance) coach of the Bears met the press late last week and managed to get through 20 minutes without talking about himself and without saying anything unpleasant about the general public.
While this behavior was not unique on Ditka`s part, it was different enough to be unexpected. Just a couple of days earlier, in an outburst that echoed Richard Nixon`s fabled ”last press conference” of 1962, Ditka, then in his self-pitying mode, had threatened to take his ball and go home. ”I`m not going to do this very much longer, anyways,” he had said.
But by Thursday, his only comment on his recent troubles was to note that if last Sunday`s game ”would`ve went the other way, this conversation would have been null and void.”
So you see, it isn`t necessarily true that when the going gets tough, Ditka takes refuge in petulance. He takes refuge in bad grammar. Not that Ditka was ever likely to be appointed a professor of English composition anywhere. But the suspicion persists that anyone who knows how to say ”null and void” knows, too, that it`s ”anyway,” without the ”s,” and ”would have gone the other way,” respectively.
We have, then, the possibility that Ditka might be something quite rare in the cosmos-a pseudo-dodo. Anyone can try to seem smarter than he is; only very special people make a major effort to appear dumber than they really are. To be sure, in Ditka`s case there is method in his muddle-headedness. By the estimates of his industry-that`s advertising, not football-Ditka makes about a $1 million a year thanks to his image, which is not that of a professor of English composition. It is that of the hard-nosed average Joe who doesn`t have any truck-no, make that who don`t have no truck-with the niceties when it comes to winning the game. It`s the kind of image helped by an occasional grammatical outrage.
And Ditka`s image may well have been on his mind last week because it`s taken a bit of a beating lately. Even before his threat (quickly withdrawn) to go away, there was his outspoken displeasure at what he considered the insufficient enthusiasm displayed by the spectators at Soldier Field. If his claim to be misunderstood recalled Nixon, his ”sitting on their hands”
outburst blaming the fans for the Bears` troubles had some similarity to Jimmy Carter`s 1979 conclusion that inflation was all the fault of the general public. Even for someone running only for more endorsements, these are not the best people to be compared to, image-wise.
For the first time since he became the Bears` head coach more than seven years ago, Ditka`s outbursts and scowlings have started to be interpreted as petulant whining, not manly aggressiveness. One local radio performer has even taken to referring to him as ”Coach Sybil,” apparently a reference to the woman with multiple personalities. Ditka`s image can handle comparison with multiple personalities. It may not be able to survive comparison with a woman. Actually, the fears about Ditka`s image may be exaggerated, based as they are largely on the remarks on call-in shows and the sentiments expressed in letters to various editors. These happen to be two of the very worst indexes of public opinion. The vast majority of people don`t listen to those programs or read the letters, and most of those who do don`t call or write in. But that`s one of the strange things about the image business. What people think is real becomes real, whether it`s real or not. What`s real right now is that people think Ditka is acting strange.
So what else is new? Ditka has been acting strange for years. After all, he`s a football coach. Most of them are a bit strange. Ever since he became the head coach before the 1982 season, Ditka has now and then feuded with his players, bad-mouthed his biggest stars, fumed at the fans and in general tested the boundaries of good taste and good sense.
It was two seasons ago that Ditka tossed his wad of chewing gum into the stands in San Francisco, hitting a woman. Considering that his throw followed a 41-0 loss to the 49ers, the gum was just about the only thing the Bears threw that night that hit anything at all.
Two seasons earlier, Ditka was guilty of drunken driving, this time after a Bears` victory. Unlike gum-throwing, drunken driving is not a bit funny. It is the kind of behavior that could, and perhaps should, destroy someone`s reputation, which encompasses image but transcends it. Ditka`s was barely scratched.
But then, by the time Ditka was tried, convicted and punished, the Bears were Super Bowl champs. When the gum flew in 1987, the Bears were on their way to an 11-4 season and first place in the National Football Conference`s Central Division, a spot they have occupied for most of Ditka`s coaching tenure. Now, they have already lost four games, and they are tied for second, which is another way of saying they are tied for third. They have lost four of their last five games, and they have a few tough ones ahead, including a finale against the mighty 49ers in San Francisco. It is entirely possible that they won`t even get into the playoffs.
What is acceptable, even endearing, behavior on the part of a coach who is winning becomes objectionable when he starts to lose. There is scant evidence that Ditka is any more petulant, arrogant, self-centered, self-pitying or silly now than he has been for years. He hasn`t changed.
Neither, really, has the public, which always gives winners more leeway and turns on them when they cease to be winners. What`s different is that, just in crass, monetary terms, Ditka is as much a television commercial performer as he is a football coach, and now if lost football games are followed by a loss of cool, they also may be followed by a loss of income. Heavy hangs the head that sells the soap.