They were more than just the favorites

Last time around, Bears dominated on and off the field

LOS ANGELES -- Watching the Bears prepare for the Super Bowl from long distance -- when you live in a town without professional football, you take your pleasures where you find them -- has been an oddly dispiriting exercise.

The Bears enter the game as underdogs? They have been reduced to playing the dreary no-respect card? Their quarterback is a national media punching bag? Only the presence of Brian Urlacher saves them from an almost total lack of high-profile star power?

Sigh.

It was different 21 years ago, children. So very different.

In January of 1986, the Bears went to New Orleans and put on a performance for the ages, one by which all other Super Bowl exhibitions would forever be judged.

The game? Goodness no, not the game. That had been settled much earlier, before the Bears and the Patriots even arrived in town. The Bears had lost only one game all season long -- beneath a full moon on a Monday night in Miami -- and had crushed their first two playoff opponents, the Giants and the Rams, by a combined score of 45-0, the NFL's first consecutive postseason shutouts since the 1940s. The Patriots, by contrast, were only the third-best team in their division. So there was no doubt about which team would win, although the extent of the Bears' triumph -- the most points in Super Bowl history, the largest margin of victory -- was impressive even by the standards they had set for themselves.

''I was ready for Bourbon Street after the third quarter,'' Steve McMichael said after the 46-10 rout was complete.

But the show the Bears put on in the days leading up the game, now that was truly breathtaking, and it permanently fixed their place in Super Bowl lore. It is fair to say, in fact, that the Bears hit the ground running and never looked back.

Jim McMahon set the tone minutes after he stepped off the plane from Chicago when he settled in behind his trademark indoor sunglasses and complained that the specialist who had been giving him acupuncture treatments, a gentleman named Hiroshi Shiriashi, whose day job was trainer for the Japanese national track team, had not been allowed on the team charter. The Bears, it seemed, were skeptical about such unorthodox treatments and wanted him to employ the services of team trainer Fred Caito.

And why did McMahon need acupuncture?

''I've got a sore ass,'' he replied.

''Me, too,'' said a reporter, perhaps referring to the fact that such words did not routinely appear in family newspapers in that less unbuttoned era. ''Could you say it another way?''

And so the Bears were off, leading fans and reporters alike on a merry chase through what was then America's happiest town that lasted until they took the field on Sunday and everybody could finally relax.

McMahon was at the center of the action, of course, famously mooning a helicopter that had the temerity to fly over the Bears' practice field, famously revealing the contents of a letter from Pete Rozelle concerning the headband he had worn bearing the commissioner's name the previous week and famously not calling the women of New Orleans ugly sluts. He also took time to tape a spot for Bob Hope's upcoming television special, but only at a price -- an invitation to appear in the entertainer's golf tournament in Palm Springs the following month.

But for sheer animal ferocity, for a mass display of panic that made you fearful of permanent injury, nothing during Super Bowl Week could match the first official media sighting of William Perry. This was not an assignment for the faint of heart, as cameramen and reporters emerged from the dark corridor under the Superdome stands where they had been penned in and bore down on their prey.

Those who failed to make it with the first wave had to slink off and join the relatively decorous gatherings around Walter Payton, Mike Ditka, Willie Gault, Richard Dent and the rest. But those who survived were rewarded with what I will always remember as one of the supreme moments in Super Bowl excess.

The Super Bowl Shuffle, someone demanded. Was Perry really singing? ''Oh, yes,'' he replied, appearing hurt by the question's implication.

''Do you get a lot of letters from women?'' a reporter asked, opening what seemed to be a promising line of inquiry.

''I don't get no letters from ladies,'' Perry said. ''I'm happily married with a little one and another one on the way. If I see a letter with a girl's name on it, I throw it away.''

What would he weigh for the Super Bowl? ''308 or 304,'' Perry answered with admirable precision, and then he dropped a bombshell. He planned to slim down to less than 300 pounds the following season.

''They'd still love me if I get down to 290 or 295,'' Perry said of his adoring fan base. ''Because of the way I carry myself and because I like to be around people. Besides, I loved myself at 350 or 360. So I'd love myself at 304 or 308.''

After Perry discussed his latest endorsements -- his picture had just appeared in an ad for a brokerage firm in The New York Times -- and revealed he had turned down a role in a movie starring Cyndi Lauper (''It's about her becoming a wrestler and I was going to be her bodyguard. I read the script, but I don't care for her, really''), a clipped British accent asked if he realized what a big sport football had become in England.

''I didn't know I had no fans back in England,'' Perry replied, ''but to everybody back there, I say hello.'' Satisfied at last, we walked away, praying to the gods of journalism that our talents would be worthy of such glorious raw material.

But if the Bears who won t86 Super Bowl were a team for the ages both on and off the field, their fans rose to the occasion, too. Not for them the endless agony over who should play quarterback or whether the defense would show up for a particular game or be missing in action. They knew greatness when they saw it, and they reacted accordingly.

After the game, as invited guests were enjoying an elegant party in a hotel ballroom, one that featured white tablecloths, delicate champagne flutes, mountains of shrimp and oysters, small lakes of gumbo and other Creole specialties, the quiet murmur of conversation was broken by the liquor-fueled lyrics of ''Bear Down, Chicago Bears'' bellowed out from a corner of the room.

''Who is that?'' asked an annoyed lady of obvious refinement.

''I'm afraid it's the managing editor of the Chicago Sun-Times,'' I admitted.

I hope I can count on more dignified behavior from the editorial board on Sunday.

Ron Rapoport covered Super Bowl XX as a sports columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times.