Chicago Bears
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7correct to beat the crowd
This Chicago Bears trivia quiz has 50 free questions with answers and runs from the team's 1919 birth as a starch company's works team in Decatur to the modern era: George 'Papa Bear' Halas, Red Grange's barnstorming tour, the 73-0 championship game, the Monsters of the Midway, Sid Luckman's T-formation, Gale Sayers, Dick Butkus and Brian Piccolo, Walter Payton, the 1985 team with its 46 defense, the Refrigerator and the Super Bowl Shuffle, Devin Hester's Super Bowl kickoff and the rivalry with Green Bay. It is built for lifelong Bears fans, for anyone hosting a Chicago sports round, and for casual fans who want to see how much they have absorbed. Easy questions cover the colours, the stadium and the big names; the hard ones dig into ring sizes, indoor playoff games and who wrote the fight song. Every answer has been checked against a reliable source and each question shows its explanation and citation once you have answered.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The Bears began as a company team for a starch manufacturer in which Illinois city?
Decatur
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.
Q 02In 1922 George Halas renamed the Staleys as a nod to which Chicago team, whose ballpark his players shared?
The Cubs
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.
Q 03The catchphrase 'Da Bears' comes from the Superfans, a recurring sketch on which TV show?
Saturday Night Live
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.
Q 04The Bears' famous helmet logo is a wishbone-shaped version of which letter?
C
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.
Q 05The Bears' nickname 'Monsters of the Midway' originally belonged to which institution?
U of Chicago
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.
Q 06Which team did the Bears beat 73-0 in the 1940 NFL Championship Game?
Washington
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.
Q 07Which offensive scheme did George Halas revive with the Bears, powering their 1940 title team?
The T-formation
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.
Q 08The cramped indoor field of the 1932 Bears-Spartans playoff introduced which feature, adopted league-wide the next season?
Hash marks
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.
Q 09Before founding the Bears, George Halas played 12 games in 1919 as an outfielder for which baseball team?
The New York Yankees
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.
Q 10In which Ohio city was the 1920 meeting that founded the NFL held?
Canton
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.
Q 11The 1925 signing of which college halfback, followed by a barnstorming tour, drew pro football's first huge crowds?
Red Grange
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.
Q 12Bronko Nagurski, the Bears' fullback and tackle of the 1930s, was born in which country?
Canada
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.
Q 13Bears quarterback Sid Luckman played college football at which Ivy League school?
Columbia
Q 21Walter Payton played his college ball at which historically Black university?
Jackson State
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.
Q 22Whose NFL career rushing record did Walter Payton break in 1984?
Jim Brown
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.
Q 23Which team handed the 15-1 1985 Bears their only loss, on a Monday night in December?
The Miami Dolphins
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.
Q 14The trophy named after George Halas goes each season to the champions of what?
The NFC
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.
Q 15Soldier Field, opened in 1924, was dedicated to American soldiers who died in which conflict?
World War I
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.
Q 16Soldier Field hosted the opening match of which international tournament in 1994?
The FIFA World Cup
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.
Q 17Gale Sayers, the Bears rookie who scored six touchdowns in one 1965 game, was known by which nickname?
The Kansas Comet
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.
Q 18A 1971 TV film with James Caan dramatised Gale Sayers's friendship with which Bears teammate?
Brian Piccolo
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.
Q 19Which future Super Bowl head coach was the Bears' first-round quarterback from 1987 to 1993?
Jim Harbaugh
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.
Q 20The annual award for the best college linebacker is named after which Bears great?
Dick Butkus
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.
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.
Q 24The 1985 Bears' defence, run by coordinator Buddy Ryan, was known by what name?
The 46
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.
Q 25The Bears won Super Bowl XX, 46-10, in which city?
New Orleans, LA
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.
Q 26Which Bears defensive lineman, nicknamed 'The Refrigerator', scored a rushing touchdown in Super Bowl XX?
William Perry
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.
Q 27After a $5,000 fine for an Adidas headband, Jim McMahon wore one in the 1985 playoffs bearing whose name?
Rozelle
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.
Q 28The Bears' 'Super Bowl Shuffle' was nominated for a Grammy but lost to 'Kiss', a hit for which artist?
Prince
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.
Q 29Which Bears star declined to take part in the Super Bowl Shuffle at all?
Dan Hampton
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.
Q 30Mike Singletary, the NFL's Defensive Player of the Year in 1985 and 1988, played college football for which Texas school?
Baylor
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.