The Rise & Self-Destruction of the Greatest Football Team in History: The Chicago Bears and Super Bowl XX [Hardcover]

John Mullin (Author), John Madden (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 2005

The 1985 Bears, with their explosive concoction of talent, personality, eccentricity, and ego, were unlike any other collection of professional athletes that came before them. They changed the way Americans view their sports teams, and no other team since has even approached the phenomenon that swept the nation during the Bears’ run to Super Bowl glory. But the volatility that helped make the 1985 Bears the greatest football team on the planet also contributed to their inevitable implosion. This is the real story of one unique team’s rise to glory and a behind-the-scenes look at their fall from grace.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

"That 1985 season was the most fun year I ever saw, not only for broadcasting, but for the whole NFL. For the country, really. . . . I mean, the whole thing was right out of central casting. . . . It was like a smorgasbord, a buffet." —from the Foreword by John Madden

"People liked John Wayne to walk into a bar and announce, ‘Whiskey for my men and beer for my horses.’ That was us." —Dan Hampton

From the Inside Flap

The Fridge. Da Coach. Mac. Hamp. The Colonel. Samurai. Mama’s Boy Otis. Sweetness. Ming. Decades after their coronation in Super Bowl XX, the players’ names and memories are as alive as when the Bears were laying waste to the National Football League and hosting a party to which all of America was invited. This story is about more than the greatest football team ever. They were, for a brief, magical moment, a band of eccentrics and athletes who went from nobodies to rock stars and cult figures. They took America on a wild ride in the middle of one of the wildest times in its history. With their personalities, their greatness, and their flaws, they were more than America’s Team. They were America. It was a team whose "Super Bowl Shuffle" recording earned a Grammy nomination. It was a team whose players graced the covers of Newsweek and Rolling Stone and reaped millions in endorsements. It was a team whose personalities were the most sought-after guests for the Late Show with David Letterman, The Tonight Show, and Saturday Night Live. The players and their agents transformed sports marketing worldwide, changed the place of athletes in sports media, brought "woofing" and the Gatorade Shower to sports, and raised millions for charity. And in the end, it was a team that blew itself apart from the inside, from upper management on down to the players themselves. This is the real story, the whole story—much of it never before revealed and now told by the players and personalities that swirled around the Bears. From the draft of Walter Payton in 1975 to the day of Mike Ditka’s firing and his tearful farewell with the words, "This too shall pass," this is how the Bears came to be, how they changed sports in America, and how they finally collapsed under the weight of the very things that made them unlike any group of athletes before or since. But beyond all the zaniness and international fanfare, they played the game. Oh, how they played the game . . .

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Triumph Books (September 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1572437901
• ISBN-13: 978-1572437906
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.9 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,071,049 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Fell Way Short, July 2, 2007

By 

Brian Smith "Smitter 11" (Plainfield, IL United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Rise & Self-Destruction of the Greatest Football Team in History: The Chicago Bears and Super Bowl XX (Hardcover)

I had high hopes for Mullin's book on the 1985 Bears, but I couldn't help but feel disappointed that the book failed to deliver much of anything that hadn't been reported during and following the 1985 season. Not only did this book fail to prove, unequivocally, that these Bears were the best team in professional football history, but also failed to thoroughly reveal the team's "self destruction" in any significant way. While there were a few of interesting behind-the-scenes stories, the book is dissatisfying in terms of being long on common knowledge about the team and short on inside information. John Mullin is a reporter with a major Chicago newspaper and should have more "reach" into the non-public happenings of the team than he demonstrated in the book. Maybe he wasn't able to publish his juiciest findings--did an overly cautious publishing company dump the good stuff? In any event, the book was dismally underachieving in terms of bringing any new information to light.

Additionally, and this is more a matter of personal taste, I found Mullin's style to be a little disjointed. His stories seem to end abruptly, and he jumps immediately into another topic without a decent segue. Some topics are dropped without conclusion and others appear intermittently throughout the book without any rhyme or reason. His writing style was more like reading 200+ pages of USA Today style "snippets" of information than a cohesive tale of a historically great football team.

In the hands of a more capable storyteller, this book may have been a winner, but the lack of new information and poor organization of the material made this one a loser for me. I kept reading in hopes of something to make the task of reading this book worthwhile, but such a moment never materialized.

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Why is greatness so hard to maintain? Find out here.., January 5, 2006

By 

Michael Erisman (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Rise & Self-Destruction of the Greatest Football Team in History: The Chicago Bears and Super Bowl XX (Hardcover)

This story of a football team illustrates a much more profound element of human psychology - how to handle success. Whether success is a relationship, career, business, or any other endeavor, the lessons here are to be heeded or the result will invariably be the same.

To put this in context, the 1985 Chicago Bears football team is arguably the best ever assembled in the modern era. While other teams may have had more success over time, or had 1 less loss, this team is widely regarded as the most dominating. In addition to the on-the-field success, the team created media stars like Mike Ditka, Jim McMahan and "The Fridge", along with established all time greats like Walter Payton, Mike Singletary and Dan Hampton.

So what happened? How did it blow up so fast? A classic tale of forgetting to continue what made you successful in the first place.

The players and the team became successful by playing harder, and using an almost desperate intensity to how they played the game from a play design perspective to personal and individual motivation. At first this focus (the 46 defense, the frenetic play style) took the league by surprise and gave them a decided advantage, but like most of us with any kind of success, once it was achieved they forgot to keep changing to adapt to the world they created. In addition, they succumbed to the temptation of starting to believe their own press, and became infatuated with their own greatness. Once that happens, it slips away quickly. The detail behind the strategy success and infighting that eroded the spirit of the team, are depicted clearly.

After reading this book, which is full of delicious insights and salacious comments amongst the team about each other, it is hard to find where to place the blame. Everyone seemed so wrapped up in the media circus that they all seemed to drift away from the mission.

For the football fan, this is a great book, full of strategic detail and player reactions. For the person who wants to better understand the dynamics of how to keep themselves or their organization from getting too full of themselves and their success, the lessons here are easy to see, though often difficult to avoid.

The book is written exceptionally well, in that it flows easily, is always interesting, follows a nice chronological progressions, and does what it intends - describe the amazing success and quick burn out of perhaps the greatest football team ever assembled.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Really Bad Book, March 30, 2009

By 

Wilcy Moore - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Rise & Self-Destruction of the Greatest Football Team in History: The Chicago Bears and Super Bowl XX (Hardcover)

My one star review is not meant to convey any negative feelings toward the Chicago Bears in general. It is merely my opinion of the quality of THIS particular book, which is bad.

Take an interesting, if not fascinating, sports subject and grant unfettered access to the participants, and one usually expects a relatively coherent summary account filled with interesting insights not available in other forums. At least that's what I usually expect. What the author delivers here is a disjointed commentary that floats from one topic to the next, with no transition or resolution to the schizophrenic anecdotes that are hurled at the reader. The author routinely introduces a subject in one paragraph and then jumps to another subject in the next paragraph without finishing the original thought.

Then there are the quotes. The pages are littered with quotes from the players and other personnel that may or may not be related to one of the topics in the general area of the quote. However, the author never indicates where you should stop reading and jump to the quote, so the reader is constantly being interrupted. It's an unbelievably annoying style that I've fortunately never encountered before. And to say that the quotes are relevant or interesting would be extremely generous.

I was excited to read this account of the great 1985 Chicago Bears. I bought the DVD set of games that is also available and watched a few of them while I was reading this book. Suffice it to say that this particular book adds nothing to the enjoyment of reliving that glorious season. I strongly recommend looking at one of the other alternatives that is available simply because nothing can possibly be as annoying as the writing "style" of this particular author.