'06 lacking in lore of rings

There seems to be a lot of talk about monkeys in the Bears' locker room, about monkeys off their backs. Someone mentioned King Kong. I don't understand that. Don't you find it strange that the Bears found relief in beating Seattle in a home playoff game?

Last week, I wrote that the Bears' season would be a failure if they lost to the Seahawks. Some people didn't seem to care for that. So maybe this is about expectations, or perspective. Maybe we can blame Michael Jordan or Mike Ditka and the Punky QB, maybe even Ozzie Guillen, but we need to slow down a little on these Bears. They haven't proved anything yet, other than they wouldn't blow it to a mediocre team.

So here goes again: If the Bears lose to New Orleans on Sunday in the NFC Championship Game at Soldier Field, the season is still a failure.

If they lose, you will not walk away thinking, ''Oh, well, it was a good season.'' Not after the game. Not in six months.

And this is for sure: The team will have no place in Chicago history.

The truth is, this team's spot in Chicago lore is still very much in question. Two Chicago sports historians and even ex-champion Bear Ed O'Bradovich aren't expecting a generations-long love affair with the 2006 Bears, even if they go on to win the Super Bowl.

''Where will they be remembered?'' said O'Bradovich, who played for the 1963 Bears. ''I think the '63 team will be remembered for being the first team that proved that defense can win a world championship. The '85 team was probably the greatest Super Bowl team and maybe the greatest team of all time. If the '06 team won it, that would be great and wonderful, but to compare them to '85 or '63? No. There are too many question marks on both sides of the ball.''

This is a Bears town, and any championship Bears team always will be beloved in Chicago. How else do you explain still hearing O'Bradovich on the radio 43 years later? Just getting to the Super Bowl always would be remembered.

But it's hard to know what makes a team connect to a town through history. The 1969 Cubs and the South Side Hitmen are still beloved even though they didn't win a thing. Even the late 1960s Bears teams, bad as they were, are loved for their toughness.

Chicago hasn't had many teams get to the championship round and then lose. The Blackhawks did it in the early 1970s, but that team has its spot in the city's sports lore as the end of a long run of success, including a Stanley Cup.

The 1959 White Sox got to the World Series and lost. And Chicago sports historian Rich Lindberg, whose book Total White Sox is out now, said when the 2005 Sox won the World Series that they had buried the love for the '59 team.

Today, he said, he's backing off of that. The legacy of the '05 Sox still is waiting to see if Guillen can win again.

''The great thing about the '06 Bears is they're building upon their success,'' Lindberg said. ''But they're going to need two Super Bowls in five years, a run like that, to be considered an iconic franchise in Chicago. They're going to need two or three more years like this to bury the '85 Bears.''

This team had a legitimate shot last season. And then it had plenty of salary-cap space, and the entire defense returning, to build to that last step.

So a loss now will be disappointing in the short term and forgotten in the long run.

Why does everyone keep asking Lovie Smith and the Bears if the pressure is off?

''If they don't win now, they may have to give a second look at Lovie,'' O'Bradovich said. ''I believe they're going to seize the moment. But if they don't, there will be all kind of skepticism surrounding them. A disappointing season? Holy cow, yes.''

Chicago has had too much success as a sports city recently to accept a top-seeded team losing at home. When the Bears won in 1985, the city had gone 21 years without a title in any major sport. (Sorry, Sting.) But in the last 22 years, Chicago has won a Super Bowl, six NBA titles and a World Series.

''If the Bears win, they'll be one of the great beloved teams in Chicago lore, but it won't compare to '85,'' Lindberg said. ''In comparison to the charisma of the 1985 Bears, this team doesn't have it. In 20 years' time, the kind of things the Bears were doing back then ... the NFL was less rigid, less formal. Today, the NFL is a lot more businesslike, corporate, straight-laced. The '85 Bears, to me, symbolized the unique relationship between Chicago and its football team.''

For some reason, that 1985 team has continued to get better in everyone's memory, year after year. That's a function of what the team did to the city's psyche.

What about this team?

''The NFL, to me, looks like every year a one-year wonder is coming along,'' Lindberg said. ''The argument is whether parity is good. Maybe it isn't if it creates mediocrity in the league.

''Do we want to see every team in the NFL go to the Super Bowl? Does that somehow cheapen things? You lose the measurement tool of how well your team stacks up when there is no elite team. When the team finally breaks through and defeats the 10-ton gorilla, it creates satisfaction.''

That's what the Bulls did with the Detroit Pistons.

Gerald Gems, also a Chicago sports historian, said this season's Bears ''are vanilla'' compared with the personalities of the '85 Bears.

''Also,'' he said, ''there were comparisons early in the year, but now the defense is no longer dominating like the '85 Bears.''

So have fun in a playoff run, but let's wait a little while on crowning these guys, as Dennis Green would say.

Letters to our sports columnists appear Sunday. Send e-mail to inbox@suntimes.com. Include your full name, hometown and a daytime phone number.