- One Man’s Thoughts on Team Loyalty - January 8, 2019
“The Plight of a Bears Fan”
I am an enigma, a Chicago Bears fan living in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Everyone always asks me how I became a Bears fan, and I usually answer with its a long story, but today I’ll tell it. I grew up in a small Wisconsin town in the 1980’s, my dad was a Bears fan and I still remember watching games with him on Sundays. The defense was amazing led by Hall of Famers like Mike Singletary, Richard Dent, and offensively Walter Payton was arguably the best running back to ever play. The Bears won the SuperBowl in 1985 when I was 5 and life was good as a Bears fan. I had a Bears helmet and jersey and I would dress up as Walter Payton on Halloween every year for trick or treating. My dad was killed in a car crash in 1990 when I was 10, and I don’t really remember why he became a Bears fan, besides he liked to be contrarian and giving people a hard time. Next thing you know its the mid 90s and some guy named Brett Favre is traded to the Packers and for the next decade the Packers are perennial SuperBowl favorites and the Bears are terrible. My mom is a Packers fan and I remember having SuperBowl parties at our house to watch the Packers. At that point it would have been perfectly acceptable time for an adolescent to switch allegiances and become a Packers fan with the rest of the crowd… But no, I didn’t take the easy way out, partly because I am stubborn, and partly in memory of my dad I stuck it out and stayed a loyal Bears fan. Next Aaron Rodgers is drafted in my mid 20’s and he is even better than Favre, and the Packers are great again for another decade! I couldn’t believe it, Packer fans somehow luck into back to back hall of fame QBs, Rodgers arguably the best to ever play, all while the Bears rifled through one bad QB after another, each one seeming to be worse than the last! This was the worst time to be a Bears fan, a young adult and all your friends and family are Packer fans, you see all the joy everyone around you is experiencing as they just keep winning, and winning, and winning… all the while crushing the Bears pretty much every time they play. It was a miserable time to be a Bears fan, it almost broke me a few times.
The Bears did have a couple aberration good seasons, even going to the super bowl one year, but only to have my heart crushed by losing to Peyton Manning and the Colts. I still go to Lambeau pretty much every year for the Packer Bears game, and endure hordes of Packers fans jeering at me with my Bears garb on, and I’m not really sure why I do it since it’s mostly torture… While the majority of fans mostly give you friendly banter, there is a lot of ugliness that goes on too, I’ve had my hat ripped off and torn apart in front of me, spit at, and several other forms of harassment at Lambeau. My brother was brought to tears as a kid at Lambeau by hostile Packers fans, he ended up buckling and became a Packers fan. As I left Lambeau this year to a sea of “Bears still suck” chants after the Bears imploded in the 2nd half of a game they completely dominated, I asked myself, why I do this to myself.
In all honesty the older I get the less I actually care about who wins or loses. With the advent of DFS(Daily Fantasy Sports) and fantasy football I really find myself cheering more for players then teams these days. As a youngster my mood for several days could be altered by the outcome of a Bears game, but as I mature I realize how meaningless in the grand scheme of things football ultimately is. This weekend the Bears lost again in heartbreaking fashion as a game winning field goal attempt plunked off the left crossbar and then careened to the lower crossbar bounced back towards the field harmlessly, missing the mark. I yelled at the TV and was saddened that the Bears season was over, but life goes on. At the end of the day without having any rooting interest there is no fun in watching sports. I still love having a team to cheer on, support, and follow, which for me will always be the Chicago Bears.
