Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

This book follows the rise and fall of the 1985 Super Bowl champion Chicago Bears. Unfortunately, it falls way short of the same greatness that they achieved.
While the book does a nice job of revealing some new stories (like the Jay Hilgenberg saga), it doesn't really uncover much of substance regarding the Bears. It does retell a lot of commonly known tales (Walter Payton's disappointment at not scoring in the Super Bowl) and adds a few tidbits to them.
In the end though, this Bears team was fascinating. It was full of characters and stories from top to bottom. This book disappoints in not giving more meat to existing stories and not uncovering enough unknown stories.

Great reading. I couldn't put it down. Anyone who remembers that '85 season (the 'Fridge, Ditka, Buddy Ryan and the 46 defense, the domination during the play-offs) will love the inside stories about how that season came to be and why that dominating ride ended way too soon.

There were plenty of tidbits here and there throughout the book to keep me interested. There were some things in here I didnt know about and I felt the book did its job adequately. It's worth a read.

I believe a book on the so-called "greatest football team in history" should be a more scholary effort than what we have here. This is a long ways from what we would get from an author such as David Halberstam who has done books on great teams. Leafing through the book it appears to have been put together in a very short time. I read the book in one sitting, a couple hundred pages with less than the usual amount of information on each page. This "greatest football team in history" may have been great, but it was so for only one year. Several of the things that caused this team to self-destruct are also found in other teams in other sports. The reasons are hardly unique to the 1985 Chicago Bears. The book is entertaining, but it lacks the meat and potatoes a book of this sort is trying to project. I found this book to be of similar quality to "'63: The Story of the 1963 World Champion Chicago Bears." Neither one is destined to become a classic in a sports' library. I enjoy reading books on George Halas and his legacy in pro football with the Bears, but both of these books need someone else to tell the story.

How could you go wrong for a Christmas present to a Bear's fan? My cousin loves this book and reads it when his beloved team isn't playing.

Due to defense and da self-destruction, so far dis season, of da rest of da NFC North, Da hapless, Halas-less, Bears find demselves in 1st place! First da White Sox win the World Series and now THIS? Be Afraid. Be very Afraid that the Earth has tilted off its axis, and shall soon stop revolving, spinning, in its former fashion, that gravity shall then cease to work its magic, and that all of us, Monsters of the Midway et. al., will be thrown off into the far flung reaches of the Milky Way!
This book is a dandy retrospective of the fun, the games, what went right, and then wrong - so very, very wrong - with Da 1985 Bears, complete with color glossy photos - although not including my favorite: da one of Da Coach flipping off da media as he's walking off da field - and index in da back.
So what about this year? Could be, might be ... Look at da Standings - Quick! Before Da Bears realize dey ain't playin' like Da Bears and revert to deir usual hibernation. /TundraVision, Amazon Reviewer, Diasporaic Bear Fan.
P.S. OhMyGosh! Now we have an offense our defense can be proud of! Stay tuned for SuperBowl Shuffle II at SuperBowl XL? /TV, 12/25/05
Or Not /TV, 1/1/06
Happy Hibernation! See ya next season! /TV, 1/15/06
4/0!!!!!!!!!!! /TV, 10/1/06