The 1985 Chicago Bears remain a team with more crazy stories attached to them than any Super Bowl champion in NFL history. That is a fact. It was a cast of characters that no team before or since has even come close to. Nobody exemplified that better than Steve McMichael, their mercurial-but-dominant defensive tackle who has remained an entertaining personality in the media ever since his playing days.
So it was hardly a surprise that ESPN went to him for a possible story about the Bears’ actual Super Bowl rings that they received for winning their championship. True to form, McMichael not only had a story to tell, he had a blistering opinion to go along with it. Nobody was safe. Not the ring makers, not his head coach and not even the owners.
“Baby, let me tell you about the night we got our Super Bowl rings. You think it’d be glorious, right? The 49ers got to get their rings in Honolulu, Hawaii … so I’m thinking, ‘Well, this is going to be a big-time thing.’ I get the news we are having the ring ceremony at the Holiday Inn in Highwood, Illinois. … I show up at the dinner and [Bears coach] Mike Ditka is already half in the bag.
We’re sitting there waiting to get the rings and before we get the ring, he’s already passed out in his plate of food sitting at the table with the McCaskeys. They start giving the rings out and I look at it — and it’s a nice ring, diamonds and gold. But I heard the NFL allocates $4,000 per ring, and the owners can put more money into it to make it nicer. How much do you think that ring cost the Bears? $4,000.”
While the story in itself is highly entertaining and hilarious, it also seems to show where the seeds were planted for why the Bears never were able to repeat their success from that year. Ditka was clearly enjoying his newfound glory. Perhaps a little too much. As for the McCaskeys, they were already starting to showcase their reputation for being cheap when they couldn’t shell out a few extra dollars to make the rings nicer for a team that won the franchise’s first championship in 22 years.
A reputation they still haven’t quite shaken to this day.
Either way, this story might sound a little farfetched and exaggerated, but let’s be honest. Most of the tales surrounding that team were proven true. This is actually one of the tamer versions. So it must be true. Hopefully the next time it happens, the players will get treated with a bit more gratitude.
