Mike Ditka: The ‘ultra-ultra-ultra conservative’ coach who transcended the NFL

In the summer of 2004, the Republicans were in serious bother in Illinois. Midway through the campaign for a soon-to-be vacant US Senate seat, their chosen candidate Jack Ryan was alleged to have coerced his ex-wife Jeri, an actor who played Seven of Nine on Star Trek, to accompany him to sex clubs in New York and Paris. A scandal damaging enough back then to force him from the race, party apparatchiks scrambled for a replacement, desperate to prevent the Democrats’ rising star, some state senator called Barack Obama, from punching his ticket to Washington.For a couple of weeks, Mike Ditka was in the frame. A self-described “ultra-ultra-ultra conservative”, pro-life and anti-gay marriage, he had famously warmed up a crowd for George W Bush during the 2000 election. Across 11 years coaching the Chicago Bears, he also helmed the legendary Super Bowl-winning team of William “The Refrigerator” Perry, the first NFL outfit to capture the Irish imagination in the mid-80s. In the Windy City, hero worship of him was so excessive it even spawned a recurring skit on NBC’s Saturday Night Live called The Superfans.“Who would win in a fight?” asks Bob Swerski of the Bears-loving quartet. “Coach Ditka or a hurricane?” After his colleagues inevitably plump for their hero, he confounds the table, which includes Michael Jordan moonlighting as himself, by pondering, “What if the name of the hurricane is... Hurricane Ditka?”Adoration on that scale is why Obama openly admitted the gridiron legend would immediately become favourite to take the Senate spot. A bellicose character permanently chomping on a stogie, Ditka wore a trademark bushy moustache (Ted Lasso’s entire look is a homage) and ubiquitous Bears sweater, spoke without filter and didn’t suffer fools. Among other enterprises, he owned an eponymous steak house on Chicago’s Magnificent Mile and reporters flocked to the joint as speculation grew that “Da Coach” might enter the political arena.READ MOREMike Ditka on the sidelines in his role as coach of the Chicago Bears. Photograph: Bettman/Bettman Archive/Agency Photos “Biggest mistake I’ve ever made,” said Ditka of his subsequent decision not to run and perhaps alter forever the course of American history. No Obama means no Trump. A monumental “What if?” revisited this past week following his death at 86.He opted out, citing burgeoning business interests; his new clothing line was about to be launched, and, rather lucratively, he had become one of the first sportsmen to advertise an erectile dysfunction drug, leading one snarky Chicago hack to christen him “Limp Ditka”. Despite thinking Obama was “the worst president we’ve ever had”, Ditka still brought his Bears squad to the White House in 2011 and gifted his putative adversary a jersey with his name on the back.“Somehow the guy seemed immortal, like an Easter Island statue, like a high rift in the granite mantle of the Earth itself,” wrote Rick Telander, the great Chicago sportswriter and sometimes Dikta ghost. “Every Chicagoan is diminished in some way with Mike Ditka not here any more. Was the guy perfect? Ha! Not even close. But, brother, was he a competitor, a character, a warm, caring, nasty, walking, talking whirlwind of ferocity, tenderness and crazy contradictions. Kind of like this city itself, the Chicago he adopted despite his roots in Aliquippa, Pennsylvania.”[ Why was coach Bill Belichick snubbed from the NFL Hall of Fame?Opens in new window ]US President Barack Obama welcomes Mike Ditka's 1985 Super Bowl champions, the Chicago Bears, to the White House in 2011. Photograph: Mark Wilson/Getty Images Ditka grew up in steel country, his birthplace a convenient metaphor for somebody whipcord tough enough to become the first tight end to break 1,000 yards receiving in a season. Having won an old NFL championship with the Bears and one of the first Super Bowls with the Dallas Cowboys, he became the first in his position to reach the Hall of Fame. And all of that was just a prelude to an epic coaching career that turned him into such a pop culture icon he had cameos as himself in LA Law, Cheers, and Entourage before busting the chops of Robert Duvall and Will Ferrell in the classic children’s soccer flick, Kicking and Screaming.These past few days, former players, team-mates and colleagues have unfurled short stories and tall tales about every aspect of his life. From his decades working on CBS’s NFL Today, Jim Nantz recounted Ditka arriving to film in New York each weekend with a wad of 50 hundred-dollar bills in his pocket. He peeled one off every time he needed to tip somebody who crossed his path, figuring this largesse was the least somebody of his wealth could do to make the day of some barkeep or barista.Mike Ditka looks on from the sidelines at the Chicago Bears' National Football Conference Central Division game against the Green Bay Packers in 1990. Photograph by: Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images/Agency Photos That was superannuated, almost cuddly Ditka. In his pomp running the Bears, he had been a saltier prospect. Contractually obliged to participate in a weekly radio show on 670 The Score, a caller once accused the coach of holding back tears during the press conference after a defeat.“I’m 53 years old and my office is at 250 North Washington,” responded Dikta. “Anytime you want to meet me there, you tell me what time and I’ll whip your ass. You got that, wonder boy? It’s easy to hide behind a microphone. Let’s get out in public and see who the gutless wonder is.”In the week of his firing from the Bears in 1993, Saturday Night Live had the overwrought Superfans drafting an angry letter to the club about “the most monstrous act of betrayal ever committed in the annals of man.” Soundtracked by mournful piano, backgrounded by a framed photo of their deity, they wrote, “We do not fear for Dikta, we know Dikta will rise again. Dikta is like the sun, only smarter…”