Key matchup: Lovie's calm vs. SB storm
With the Bears headed to Super Bowl XLI, the swells with any kind of link to this city have been rising out of the woodwork like long-dormant termites.
Indeed, anybody who thinks Bernie Mac is a football authority should love the next nine days of blabber.
I believe I heard South Sider Bernard McCullough nonstop Thursday via every form of local media except smoke signals.
On Comcast SportsNet, he wore a Breathe Right strip on his sunglassed nose, giving game-strategy tips and informing us that he calls Lovie Smith ''Flip Wilson.''
I don't know, but the image of the even-keeled Bears coach as sassy, wig-wearing Geraldine, snapping, ''What you see is what you get!'' doesn't resonate for me.
No matter, Lovie is the man.
And Miami is soon to be the biggest stage of the quiet coach's life.
The way he will deal with all the frenzy and nonsense that will descend on South Florida, from West Palm Beach to Coconut Grove, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Everglades, is to remain steadfastly as he has been.
Low-key. Precise. Focused. A man of routine.
The routine starts with practices, and Lovie was thrilled to get his team back together Thursday and begin serious prep work for the battle against the Colts.
''We are trying to keep our preparation as close to what we normally do as possible,'' he said in mid-afternoon. ''Today was the typical first- and second-down game-plan day for us. We'll use the same approach tomorrow with the third-down game plan.''
''We've talked about [potential debauchery] for a while, really,'' Smith said. ''We'll prepare the players for it as best we can ... all the things that go on down there. But our team is pretty focused. We know what is at stake.''
The thing about Super Bowl week is that distractions are actually all the week is about, the norm, the very point. Aware of this, the Bears coach assures all that ''we'll have the base, the majority of our game plan in before we get a chance to go to Miami.''
That includes working inside the Walter Payton Center and saying bye-bye to the frozen January climate.
''We expect good weather down south,'' said Smith, adding that the 0 mph wind in the Bears' practice dome made ''our passing game look real good today.''
The nice part for a leader like Smith is that he doesn't get overly worked up over big events.
And that calmness seems to trickle down to his underlings, along with the firmness of purpose.
''He has a quiet confidence about him,'' middle linebacker Brian Urlacher said. ''He's always under control. So we're always under control.''
Well, one could argue that fact, at least off-field, particularly with regard to Tank Johnson and his exploits.
Indeed, how many players need to get a judge's permission to travel outside of their own driveways?
If Johnson doesn't lock himself inside his Miami hotel room, with random side trips to the practice field and maybe to the Little Chapel of the Palms for penance, then he's not only unlucky and immature and on probation, he's a fool.
Urlacher uses Smith's demeanor as a guideline for his own.
''It gives me the opportunity to lead by example,'' he said.
There was a line in the Colts' weekly press release that couldn't help but catch a discerning reader's eye.
The Indianapolis Colts, it stated, ''are one of the most storied franchises in the NFL's 87 seasons.''
No, they're not.
They snuck out of Baltimore under cover of darkness in March 1984, and many people back in that Maryland city consider the Colts the lowest turncoats ever created.
It's amusing that the Baltimore Ravens, who are really the carpet-bagging former Cleveland Browns, do not keep the old Browns history as part of their lore.
The current Browns -- really an expansion team that appeared in 1999 to fill Cleveland's void -- act as though they are the real Browns. It's funny to look at the Browns' written history -- nothing at all from 1995 to 1999, the years when they didn't exist. Or rather, sort of existed.
Speaking on TV on Thursday, former Bears offensive lineman Kurt Becker described what it was like when the 1985 Super Bowl Bears descended on New Orleans, with all the Bears' history and fans.
''[People] thought Chicago was the only team in town,'' Becker said. ''It was like New England wasn't even there.''
Lovie Smith speaks on and on of ''finishing.''
Finishing plays, games, seasons, championships.
With any luck, he'll get his boys to finish the impending week of Miami mayhem with class and success.
And avoid the Geraldine comparisons in the process.
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