Here's to the first football game I remember

This was a cultural touchstone, man, and I'm happy to have read this oral history of the "Super Bowl Shuffle".

Dan Hampton (Chicago Bears defensive tackle/defensive end, 1979-90): They had approached me to be in the thing and I refused because of being superstitious. I thought it was presumptuous to say, "Oh yeah, we're going to the Super Bowl" when the franchise had never been in one. Willie gave me lyrics, I can't remember, "something something Danimal," or something, and I said there's no way. They hastily rewrote it and went to McMichael and he'd seen that I wasn't doing it and asked why, and I said, "You idiot, you're more superstitious than I am, I ain't gonna jinx this," and he said, "You're right, I ain't going to do this either." It ended up going to Mike Richardson. 

...

Mike Ditka (coach, Chicago Bears, 1982-92): I didn't know anything about it. It surprised me when I found out. But we had a fun group of guys, and I never discouraged them from having fun. That wasn't the way I did things. Did I think it was inappropriate? No. If you don't think you're going to win, then you're not going to win, that's why I thought [the song] was pretty much a symbol of the fact that they thought they were going to win.  

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Valdiserri: After a somewhat humbling first loss on Monday night, we arrived [in Chicago] probably at three in the morning. This thing had been scheduled for an eleven o' clock taping at the Park West. This was not ideal, because we had unnaturally worn our home uniforms for an away game at Miami, and those uniforms had to be cleaned, so we had to get our equipment manager to launder the uniforms and I had to physically take them down to the Park West.

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Mike Tomczak (Chicago Bears quarterback, 1985-1990/Chicago Bears Shufflin' Crew guitarist): I watched a lot of MTV, and I kind of knew the gyrations for air guitar, so I tried to bring some of my Eric Clapton knowledge, if you will. It was fun — by far one of the more enjoyable experiences of that year. I think I mentioned to Bob Seger at a concert after that season that I played guitar in a music video, and he said, "How'd that go for you?" I said, "Fine, because it wasn't plugged in."

It's even better than this Behind the Music that Fox put together a decade ago.



Plus, it was able to remind me of the existence of this poster, about which I had entirely forgotten.

I remember watching the Bears thump the Patsies in the Super Bowl...from Tumbleweed (a local Tex-Mex restaurant in m'home town)...in a snow storm...with nobody other than my family in the restaurant...