“What we do in life,” Maximus the gladiator said, “echoes in eternity.”
This is also true for football teams.
“Are you not entertained?” Maximus also asked. “Is this not why you are here?”
That sums up a Super Bowl about as well as one of these experiences can be explained.
“At my signal,” Maximus told his men, “unleash hell!”
OK, so that might not be precisely the way Brian Urlacher leads his men onto the field of battle come Sunday.
But hasn’t it been amusing–inspiring, in fact–to hear the glee in teammates’ voices as they compare the Bears middle linebacker to a mythical warrior of the arena? One who fights to the death with sword and shield?
“What’s the dude, man, Russell Crowe played?” defensive end Alex Brown recently asked.
“Maximus,” tackle Ian Scott said.
“Yeah, Maximus, that’s who he is,” Brown said, meaning Urlacher.
To be specific, Maximus Decimus Meridius, the titular titan of Crowe’s film “Gladiator,” which earned the Academy Award for best picture and Crowe the best actor Oscar in 2001.
Few of us look at No. 54 this way. We can picture Urlacher engaged in hand-to-hand combat with Lions or Panthers or Bengals, sure, but not with man-eating tigers, the way Maximus was forced to do for the crowd’s entertainment in the Roman Coliseum.
Yet it is a pretty arresting image, isn’t it? Linebacker as gladiator, I mean.
What is a Super Bowl if not a test of men’s skills and wills?
And what is a leader if not a team captain who has gained from his brothers in arms a measure of admiration and awe?
Did you hear the way even the Bears’ strategic commander, Lovie Smith, spoke of Urlacher upon arriving here Sunday to begin training for the team’s biggest battle of all?
“Six-foot-four, 258 pounds, 6 percent body fat, he’s got it all,” the coach said. “He’s a coach on the field. He’s the perfect teammate. Where do you want me to stop?”
Smith is quick to praise a player who excels above and beyond expectations, but he rarely raves about one this way.
It was a proper way to get these Super Bowl festivities going. Very soon the Indianapolis Colts and their hero, Peyton Manning, will hit town.
But for now, the Bears have beaten them to the punch.
Urlacher is their hero, their public face, by far their most known and feared warrior.
And anyone who messes with him must pay the price. Reggie Bush did. His taunting and finger-pointing in Urlacher’s direction in the NFC championship game cost him a $5,000 fine Sunday.
“He’s like a guiding light,” linebacker Lance Briggs recently said. “I don’t know where we’d be without him.”
It feels sometimes as if Urlacher has been the star of this show for eons. The truth is, he is 28. He is still youthful and exuberant, not a gnarled old pro a few steps from retirement’s door.
He practically got off the plane at the Miami airport talking about how excited he was to be here.
“You’re going to hear me say that word a lot,” Urlacher told everybody on his first night in town. “Exciting.”
He got a kick out of seeing his teammates capture the moment–Urlacher alluded to “their stinkin’ camcorders”–for, as Maximus himself would put it, eternity.
He also spoke of Manning and how he expects the Colts quarterback to become “the best of all time.”
And by the way, “I’m a big fan of his commercials.”
The last time the Bears tried to fend off Manning, they had to do so without Urlacher, who was hurt. Urlacher watched the game on a TV in his basement as his comrades were slaughtered 41-10.
“They beat us so bad,” he said the other day. “I don’t know if I’d have made any difference.”
But this is a new year, a new team, a new fight to the football death in the arena.
“And I will have my vengeance,” Maximus of the movies said, “in this life or the next.”
You can almost hear the Bears middle linebacker shouting this at Manning and the Colts, or something very similar, six days hence.
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mikedowney@tribune.com
