50 Fun Facts About Chicago Bears

The Bears began as a company team for a starch manufacturer in which Illinois city?

Decatur's A. E. Staley starch company ran the works team, then in 1921 handed it to George Halas with $5,000 to move it to Chicago, on condition he kept the Staleys name for a year.

In 1922 George Halas renamed the Staleys as a nod to which Chicago team, whose ballpark his players shared?

The Cubs shared Wrigley Field, then Cubs Park, with Halas's team, and since football players are bigger than baseball players he reasoned that if they were cubs his men were bears; several early NFL clubs borrowed baseball names.

The catchphrase 'Da Bears' comes from the Superfans, a recurring sketch on which TV show?

Saturday Night Live built the Superfans on the swagger of the 1980s team: its mustachioed Chicagoans insisted that 'Da Bears' and coach Mike Ditka could do no wrong.

The Bears' famous helmet logo is a wishbone-shaped version of which letter?

C, for Chicago, first went on the helmet in 1962, and it stayed there even after the club made an orange bear's head its primary logo in 2023.

The Bears' nickname 'Monsters of the Midway' originally belonged to which institution?

U of Chicago, whose Maroons played beside the Midway Plaisance, dropped big-time football in 1939; the Bears picked the name up in the 1940s, when Sid Luckman led them to four titles in seven seasons.

Which team did the Bears beat 73-0 in the 1940 NFL Championship Game?

Washington had beaten the Bears 7-3 weeks earlier, and its owner called them quitters and crybabies; the Bears replied with 11 touchdowns, until officials asked them to stop kicking extra points because footballs were running out.

Which offensive scheme did George Halas revive with the Bears, powering their 1940 title team?

The T-formation, sharpened with a man in motion, ran up 73 points in the 1940 title game, and rival teams dropped the single wing to copy it.

The cramped indoor field of the 1932 Bears-Spartans playoff introduced which feature, adopted league-wide the next season?

Hash marks were one of the special rules for the makeshift field in Chicago Stadium, where a blizzard had forced the game onto dirt left behind by a circus; the NFL kept them for good.

Before founding the Bears, George Halas played 12 games in 1919 as an outfielder for which baseball team?

The New York Yankees gave Halas 12 games in right field in 1919, when he batted .091 before a hip injury ended his baseball career; the next year he was running the Staleys.

In which Ohio city was the 1920 meeting that founded the NFL held?

Canton hosted the meeting in a car showroom, with George Halas there for the Staleys, and the city later used its claim as the league's birthplace to win the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

The 1925 signing of which college halfback, followed by a barnstorming tour, drew pro football's first huge crowds?

Red Grange, the 'Galloping Ghost', debuted for the Bears on Thanksgiving Day 1925 and drew some 70,000 to the Polo Grounds days later; in 1926 he and agent C. C. Pyle launched a rival league that lasted one season.

Bronko Nagurski, the Bears' fullback and tackle of the 1930s, was born in which country?

Canada: Nagurski was born in Rainy River, Ontario, and raised just over the border in Minnesota. Refused a raise in 1938, he quit to wrestle professionally, then returned in 1943 and helped win a title.

Bears quarterback Sid Luckman played college football at which Ivy League school?

Columbia's Sid Luckman, a Brooklyn native, was honoured with his own day at the Polo Grounds in 1943 and marked it by throwing seven touchdown passes, a single-game total nobody has beaten since.

The trophy named after George Halas goes each season to the champions of what?

The NFC champions have lifted the George Halas Trophy since 1984, the season after his death, and the 1985 Bears were only the second team to win it, on their way to Super Bowl XX.

Soldier Field, opened in 1924, was dedicated to American soldiers who died in which conflict?

World War I's dead were honoured when the stadium was renamed Soldier Field on Armistice Day 1925; a 2003 rebuild altered it so much that it was stripped of its National Historic Landmark status.

Soldier Field hosted the opening match of which international tournament in 1994?

The FIFA World Cup opened at Soldier Field on 17 June 1994 with a ceremony best remembered for Diana Ross missing a staged penalty; holders Germany then beat Bolivia 1-0.

Gale Sayers, the Bears rookie who scored six touchdowns in one 1965 game, was known by which nickname?

The Kansas Comet, named for his college days with the Jayhawks, scored all six on a field so muddy it would have stalled most runners; knee injuries then ended his career after only 68 games.

A 1971 TV film with James Caan dramatised Gale Sayers's friendship with which Bears teammate?

Brian Piccolo roomed with Sayers at a time when teams still assigned hotel rooms by race; weeks before Piccolo died of cancer at 26, Sayers accepted a courage award by saying it belonged to his friend.

Which future Super Bowl head coach was the Bears' first-round quarterback from 1987 to 1993?

Jim Harbaugh spent his first seven seasons in Chicago; two decades later he coached the 49ers into a Super Bowl against the Ravens, who were coached by his brother John.

The annual award for the best college linebacker is named after which Bears great?

Dick Butkus joined the Bears in 1965 in the same first round as Gale Sayers, and it was his teammate who beat him to Rookie of the Year that season.

Walter Payton played his college ball at which historically Black university?

Jackson State, in Mississippi, is where Payton ran for more than 3,500 yards before the Bears drafted him fourth overall; he could throw as well as run, and finished his NFL career with eight touchdown passes.

Whose NFL career rushing record did Walter Payton break in 1984?

Jim Brown had walked away at the peak of his career after only nine seasons, leaving 12,312 yards as the target; Payton passed it in 1984 and pushed the record to 16,726.

Which team handed the 15-1 1985 Bears their only loss, on a Monday night in December?

The Miami Dolphins won 38-24 at the Orange Bowl on 2 December 1985, preserving the 1972 Dolphins' perfect season; the Bears filmed the Super Bowl Shuffle video the next day and allowed only 198 points all year.

The 1985 Bears' defence, run by coordinator Buddy Ryan, was known by what name?

The 46 took its name from the jersey number of safety Doug Plank, not from any count of linemen and linebackers; in the 1985 playoffs it shut out both opponents on the way to the Super Bowl.

The Bears won Super Bowl XX, 46-10, in which city?

New Orleans, LA, staged the game at the Superdome in January 1986; its MVP, defensive end Richard Dent, had been an eighth-round draft pick, taken after 202 other players.

Which Bears defensive lineman, nicknamed 'The Refrigerator', scored a rushing touchdown in Super Bowl XX?

William Perry, a rookie weighing well over 300 pounds, was handed the one-yard plunge instead of Walter Payton, a choice coach Mike Ditka later called one of his biggest regrets.

After a $5,000 fine for an Adidas headband, Jim McMahon wore one in the 1985 playoffs bearing whose name?

Rozelle was hand-written on the headband, a jab at commissioner Pete Rozelle over the fine; McMahon kept the headlines coming before the Super Bowl by seeking acupuncture for a bruised backside.

The Bears' 'Super Bowl Shuffle' was nominated for a Grammy but lost to 'Kiss', a hit for which artist?

Prince won, but the Shuffle still reached number 41 on the Hot 100, and more than $300,000 of its profits went to feed, clothe and house needy Chicago families.

Which Bears star declined to take part in the Super Bowl Shuffle at all?

Dan Hampton, the Hall of Fame lineman nicknamed 'Danimal', stayed away because he thought singing about the Super Bowl before the playoffs had even begun was too cocky.

Mike Singletary, the NFL's Defensive Player of the Year in 1985 and 1988, played college football for which Texas school?

Baylor's teams are the Bears too, so Singletary kept his nickname when he turned pro; he averaged 15 tackles a game there and set a school record with 232 in one season.

Mike Ditka was the first player at which position to be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame?

Tight end was seen as a job for a tough blocker until Ditka caught 56 passes for 1,076 yards as a rookie in 1961, which is why he became the first from the position voted into the Hall.

After leaving the Bears in 1992, Mike Ditka returned to coach which team from 1997 to 1999?

The New Orleans Saints hired Ditka in 1997; he went 15-33 in three seasons and traded the club's entire 1999 draft to move up for Ricky Williams.

The Bears' second Super Bowl appearance came in the 2006 season, when they lost 29-17 to which team?

The Indianapolis Colts fell 14-6 behind in the first Super Bowl played in rain, then outscored the Bears 23-3; their coach, Tony Dungy, had once been the boss of the Bears' Lovie Smith in Tampa.

Which Bear returned the opening kickoff of Super Bowl XLI for a touchdown?

Devin Hester ran the opening kickoff back 92 yards, the only time a Super Bowl has begun that way; the opposition squib-kicked for the rest of the night rather than let him touch the ball again.

Cody Parkey's missed field goal that ended the Bears' 2018 playoff run is remembered by what name?

The Double Doink hit the left upright and then the crossbar; replays showed a defender's fingertips had tipped the 43-yard kick, and the league later scored it as a block rather than a miss.

Brian Urlacher, drafted ninth overall by the Bears in 2000, played his college football for which school?

New Mexico used Urlacher as a roving cross between linebacker and safety who also caught touchdown passes; the Bears made him a middle linebacker, and by 2005 he was the NFL's Defensive Player of the Year.

The NFL's most-played rivalry began in 1921 with a 20-0 win for the Bears' forerunners over which team?

The Green Bay Packers have faced the Bears in every season since except 1922 and the strike-hit 1982; like the Bears they began as a company team, named for the meat packer that paid for their first uniforms.

Which 337-pound nose tackle's interception return against the Bears clinched a Super Bowl place for his team in January 2011?

B.J. Raji dropped back into coverage, picked off third-string quarterback Caleb Hanie and rumbled 18 yards to score, in the old rivals' first playoff meeting since 1941.

Which opposing coach raged that the Bears 'are who we thought they were' after a 2006 Monday night collapse?

Dennis Green had just watched his Arizona side throw away a 20-point lead in under twenty minutes without the Bears scoring a point on offence; 'we let them off the hook!' he shouted.

What was the Bears' cheerleading squad, disbanded by Virginia McCaskey after the 1985 season, called?

The Honey Bears were George Halas's idea in 1976; after his death his daughter cut the club's ties with the squad, and the Bears have been one of the few NFL teams without cheerleaders ever since.

Which Heisman-winning quarterback did the Bears select first overall in the 2024 NFL Draft?

Caleb Williams was taken with a pick that came from Carolina: a year earlier the Bears had traded the first overall choice to the Panthers, whose slump then handed the top spot straight back.

The Bears hold the NFL record for most Pro Football Hall of Famers and the most what?

Retired jersey numbers: the Bears have withdrawn 14, more than any other NFL team, and when Mike Ditka's 89 joined them in 2013 the club announced that it would not retire another.

Whom did the Bears select second overall in the 2017 draft after trading up one spot?

Mitchell Trubisky went second overall in 2017 after the Bears sent three extra picks to San Francisco to move up from third; Patrick Mahomes (10th) and Deshaun Watson (12th) went later in the same round.

Which pass rusher did the Bears acquire from the Raiders in 2018 for two first-round picks?

Khalil Mack had sat out the Raiders' whole training camp in a contract dispute; the Bears paid two first-round picks for him, then made him the highest-paid defender the NFL had seen.

The Bears' team headquarters, Halas Hall, is in which Chicago suburb?

Lake Forest, on the North Shore, has housed Halas Hall since the 1970s, the current facility opening in 1997; after a major expansion the team moved training camp there in 2020, ending nearly two decades of summers in Bourbonnais.

While Soldier Field was rebuilt in 2002, the Bears played home games at Memorial Stadium in which city?

Champaign's Memorial Stadium, on the University of Illinois campus where George Halas had studied, hosted every Bears home game in 2002; the displaced team slumped from 13-3 to 4-12.

Which team did the Bears beat 14-10 in the 1963 NFL Championship Game?

The New York Giants scored first through Y. A. Tittle, but a hit to his knee left him hobbled and the Bears won 14-10, ending a 17-year wait for a title; it was George Halas's last as coach.

The infamous Fog Bowl playoff game at Soldier Field pitted the Bears against which team?

The Philadelphia Eagles, coached by former Bears defensive coordinator Buddy Ryan, lost 20-12 on New Year's Eve 1988 after fog rolled in during the second quarter and cut visibility to 15 or 20 yards.

George Halas's record of 324 coaching wins stood until 1993, when which coach passed it?

Don Shula needed 31 seasons to get there; Halas had built his total over 40, stepping away from the sideline three times, once to serve in the Second World War.

Which Bears cornerback, famous for the 'Peanut Punch', forced four fumbles in a single game in 2012?

Charles Tillman, known as 'Peanut', punched the ball out four times in a 51-20 win, the most by one player in a game since forced fumbles were first officially recorded in 1991.