Last thing Ditka fears is being overshadowed

MIAMI -- Get your mouth shut if you don't think this is the good life! Da Coach leans back in his chair at Cafe Sambal off Biscayne Bay, taking in the sun, the warm breeze, the potential pleasure of the still-sealed Ditka Brand stogie in his right paw.

Down his gullet has gone a cheeseburger, fries, a couple of iced teas and lots of fresh ocean air.

The waitress brings the dessert tray.

''That cheeseburger left me limping,'' says Ditka, begging off.

The only Super Bowl champion coach in Bears history is, like a shark after a run through a school of mullet, temporarily sated.

Mike Ditka is in Miami, doing the million or so things he does -- from pontificating on TV to selling t.p. -- and, like the rest of us, he is eagerly waiting to see if these Bears of coach Lovie Smith can duplicate the feat of Ditka's legendary 1985 team.

One could make the argument that the person who would be most affected by a 2006 Super Bowl champion Bears team would be the man who has reveled in the team's success of 21 years ago.

Indeed, who else has made such a fine living off that singular moment in time?

It's not that the Hall of Fame tight end and larger-than-life personality wouldn't be a big fish without his Super Bowl XX ring (worn now on the second finger of his left hand), but he might be closer to a sand shark than a great white.

''I am busier than I ever have been,'' Ditka says. ''I mean, I haven't touched a golf club in three months. When this week is over, I'm going to Naples, and [wife] Diana and I are going to play golf. I made myself go back to work, and now I'm doing everything. Took a shot at everything. I'm a freaking conglomerate.''

You make him list the stuff: Arena football, restaurant, new restaurant to open in May in suburban Chicago, real-estate deals, endorsements, ESPN TV and radio, wine, salsa, pork chops, sauces, shirts. He quits listing, bored.

He's wearing the Ditka-model golf shirt, the one that says ''Ditka Golf Tournament'' on the back with a mustachioed, V-haired mini-Ditka on the front.

''I'm not Ralph Lauren,'' he spurts. ''But what makes his name so special? [Bleep]! I'm being honest.''

So when Da Coach swears he is pulling for Lovie's Bears, you might as well believe him.

''It's not going to affect me one bit,'' he says of the possible redirection of Chicago limelight. ''This is the 2006 Bears. Chicago can be proud again. This game has nothing to do with the '85 Bears. In fact, it has nothing to do with this year. It comes down to 60 minutes. Anything can happen. You can even have a 21-3 lead, with a genius coach, and lose.''

The lifelong stirrer-upper just can't help a little dig at wizard Bill Belichick and his Patriots, who were ahead of the Colts in the AFC Championship Game by that score and lost.

''Of course I'm a Bears fan,'' Ditka insists. ''I don't have much with the Saints [whom he coached for three dismal seasons in the late 1990s]. When I said I was for both teams in that NFC title game, I was just waiting to make an announcement on my own show. I'm not mad at anybody.''

That's the new, 67-year-old Ditka-as-Buddha, the one who says he feels better about his life than he ever has, unfettered by people's opinions, political correctness (like that was ever a concern), axes to grind, name it.

Believe as you wish.

But as the coach-entrepreneur-philosopher points out, ''Your life is a millisecond. The Tuesday after we won the Super Bowl, the space shuttle blew up. We never visited the White House. That puts things in perspective. Still, for that millisecond, we were the best in the world at what we did, what we worked for, what we sacrificed for. If that isn't important, I don't know what is. And now the 2006 Bears are there.''

Da Coach flew down here on Jon Bon Jovi's private jet. Good life. Don't ask about the connection, but it has to do with Ron Jaworski and Bon Jovi owning the Arena League's Philadelphia Soul and fame, generally.

''Bon Jovi's a John Kerry supporter,'' Ditka says with contempt. ''Nice guy. But we didn't talk politics.''

Ah, the ultraconservative, whose logoed shirts are made ''in China, where else,'' who loves the Bears but hates them for firing him, whose contradictions are always as entertaining and endearing as his convictions.

He starts reciting the Scott toilet paper commercial he has prerecorded for Super Bowl Sunday: ''When 90 million toilets are flushed, it's the equivalent of all the water that goes over Niagara Falls in seven minutes.'' He shrugs and adds, ''Bada-bing. Bada-boom.''

Cash registers?

But now the glory is there for the taking for somebody else, somebody new.

''Jerry Vainisi called me the other day,'' Ditka says. ''He said, 'Mike, it's Jan. 26. Remember where we were?' And I did. We were getting ready to savor the moment way back when. We're all meant to be someplace. And I guess I was meant to be there, in the Superdome, on Jan. 26, 1986, winning.''

Thoughts worthy of Nietzche, perhaps. Or Lovie.

''This is their time,'' Da Philosopher says of Da 2006 Bears. ''They have earned it. In the final analysis, history will only remember who wins. And if they do win, I hope they can enjoy the next 21 years of their lives the way I did.''

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