Da Coach declines to play favorites
Who else could be as torn about the showdown for the NFC championship as Mike Ditka, the only coach to be fired by both teams?
''I'm OK with either team winning,'' Ditka says while taking a break during a photo session in a Chicago suburb. (Yes, they still love to snap shots of that distinctive, expressive, V-haired -- dare we say Bear-like? -- cranium.
''What? I'm an American,'' Ditka spews when his neutrality is openly doubted. ''I don't want to go to war. I'm not in Canada; I'm in America. I love everyone!''
Gotta sit still for one more photo. OK. Done.
''Look, I don't regret anything,'' he says of his disastrous 15-33 stint as the Saints' coach from 1997 to 1999. ''I'm like the song: I did things my way. In hindsight, maybe I wouldn't have taken that job. But I met a lot of great people. Great fans. No regrets.''
His way included trading all the Saints' 1999 draft choices and their first-round pick in 2000 for the rights to Heisman Trophy-winning running back and career dope-smoker Ricky Williams.
''See, I thought going to New Orleans was almost like divine intervention,'' Ditka says. ''A lot of good football things had happened for me there. The Bears won the Super Bowl there. The Dallas Cowboys won the Super Bowl there when I was an assistant coach. And they won when I was a Cowboys player and I scored a touchdown.
''I built the offensive line first at New Orleans, and I thought Ricky Williams could maybe be my new Walter Payton, the guy to market. But you can't see inside somebody's heart.''
Not through the smoke, anyway.
The team he had coached.
The team he was canned from.
In the city he made his home.
''This city is like the big brother to Pittsburgh,'' says Ditka, a native of Carnegie, Pa.
So now the two ships that once had Ditka on their bowsprits are soon to engage in battle. It makes Ditka reflective and wistful.
''I never had the guys in New Orleans like I had with the Bears,'' he says. ''I couldn't get everybody to get behind the program down there. There were a lot of guys in New Orleans who busted their butts, but there were others who went through the motions. Didn't have a Fencik, Payton, Hampton, McMichael, Singletary down there. More followers than leaders. Willie Roaf was a good guy, a leader. I had more Billy Joes than you can shake a stick at. But in Chicago, I had a team of leaders.''
And characters?
''They broke the mold when they made the Bears,'' the guy who led the way says. ''Remember earlier this year, when everybody was comparing this year's Bears to the '85 Bears? Come on. I mean, come on. This year's team could win the Stanley Cup, and it wouldn't matter.''
Ditka's legacy as a primal Bear is cemented by so many factors -- not the least of which is that he is the only person in team history to win an NFL title as both a player and a coach -- that you wonder how he can care about the Saints at all.
Well.
So a touch of animosity might be a unifying element here.
But what Ditka knows is that the nation is rooting for the Saints this season because of Hurricane Katrina and the lingering pain of continual gridiron failure. The Saints never have made the Super Bowl in their 40-year history.
Thus, the 2006 Bears, through no fault of their own, are seen as the ''overdogs'' -- the bad guys -- by a vast crowd.
Ditka might have his finger in more commercial pies than a roomful of Jack Horners, but his heart still bleeds pure football.
''A lot of sentiment for the Saints,'' he says.
Though not his, necessarily.
No need to point out that if the Bears win, his title as Mr. Bear will be jeopardized by a crop of new candidates.
But he loves Chicago.
It's a tough spot to be in.
''Let me just say this,'' he says. ''It doesn't matter how either team played all year, in any game, any record, none of it. It's 60 minutes. Right now. Whichever team wins, I'm fine.''
And he just might be.
Letters to our sports columnists appear Sunday. Send e-mail to inbox@suntimes.com. Include your full name, hometown and a daytime phone number.