My name is Gene and I’m a recovering Ditkaholic.
Until recently I chomped my gum just like Da Coach. I threw my gum at people just like Da Coach. I ate only fatty pork chops. I wore hideous sweaters. I shopped exclusively at Electric Avenue. I named my only son Diana.
So complete was my addiction that I underwent hip-replacement surgery, just so I could limp like Da Coach. And I didn’t even have a bad hip.
Da Coach was a god. Look at the record. The Bears haven’t won squat since he was fired in 1992, though drunken-driving arrests of a certain head coach are way down.
More Top Picks Best Recliners For Heart Patients After Open Heart Surgery
Now the good-for-nothing New Orleans Saints got Da Coach. The Saints! My life was meaningless without Ditka, so I bought Saints season tickets, memorized their roster, analyzed their draft-day needs and secured the satellite coordinates for all upcoming Saints road games. I was out of control.
Then I met Dr. Robert Burton, the director of the Chicago Institute for Sports Psychiatry. Dr. Burton is nice. He told me I wasn’t alone, that lots of people in the Chicagoland area are still obsessed with the great Ditka.
“Psychologically, the issue is to idealize people when our own self-esteem is suffering a bit,” Dr. Burton said during one of our therapy sessions. “That’s the case with die-hard Chicago football fans. The reality is, when someone comes along and achieves a comparable level of success, the older guys have to take a back seat. Until that happens, Ditka is going to be the guy.”
Dr. Burton called Chicago’s loyalty to Da Coach “a bit of a phenomenon and a puzzling one.” I’m no psychiatrist, but Ditka’s hold on Chicago seems simple enough to me. He won. He won Super Bowl XX. He won an average of 10 games a season. He invented the Fridge. He forgot more about football than Coach Wannie will ever know. And he was never, ever dull.
Remember the pushy TV anchorperson? She asked Da Coach at a news conference to repeat his choice of quarterbacks and Ditka said, “OK, honey, the starting quarterback is going to be . . . Sid Luckman.” Later, a reporter for a Spanish radio station asked Da Coach to please say a few words for the station’s listening audience. Ditka chirped: “Arriba, arriba.”
Back in the glory days, Dr. Burton used to watch the Bears. He even watched “The Super Bowl Shuffle” a couple of times, but don’t tell any of his egghead colleagues, OK? But once a shrink, always a shrink, which is why he has all sorts of theories about Ditka.
“There’s a very strong idealization with the guy, and that’s interesting because he’s revealed some of his vulnerabilities, some of which got him fired,” Dr. Burton said. “But we can overlook his flaws. We can overlook his drinking and driving . . . his cigar smoking . . . his heart attack. He’s a banged-up guy, but the public view of him is as a tough guy, someone we can look up to.”
The doctor wasn’t done. He said time is “a kind lens to look through,” which means we conveniently forget about the crummy Ditka years, like 1992, when Da Coach phoned it in after the 21-20 October loss to the Minnesota Vikings.
Dr. Burton also said Ditka appealed to our blue-collar instincts. He was one of us.
“He maintained a real image of vigor and strength and, for better or worse, a stability of character,” he said. “He’s also very outspoken. He tends to see the world in very simple terms, instead of getting into the complexities of life. People like to buy into that.”
I did. I don’t apologize for it, but the truth is, Da Coach hasn’t coached here for nearly five years. Now he’s in New Orleans, which is a great town if you like seafood, beignets and drunks dumping beer on you from those Bourbon Street balconies.
Da Coach will always have a special place in my heart. But, as Dr. Burton said: “We need to come up to speed, get into the ’90s. Times have changed, people have moved on. It’s comforting to live in the past, but it’s really more interesting to live in the future.”
Not everyone will accept Dr. Burton’s advice. I’m thinking of George Wendt and those two other Bear fanatics who idolize Da Coach. They’ll never let go.
“Yes,” Dr. Burton said, “they might be beyond hope. As a clinician, we like to say that we have to focus our attention on the people we can help.”
I’m not completely cured. You never are. Every day is a tiny struggle to rid yourself of Da Coach. I wish him well. I’ll miss his scowl, the cute little way he used to cut rookies before lunch. But the Bears need me more than Ditka does.
So today, a week before the 15-year anniversary of his first draft as Bears boss, I officially end my obsession with Da Coach. I’m canceling my Saints ticket order. I’m eating free-range chicken. I’m donating the sweater collection to charity.
There’s only one thing I can’t change just yet, but I’m working on it.
Sorry, son.