Lovie Smith was dressed appropriately and well for a Chicago Bears football coach–blue suit, peach shirt, bold orange tie–as he met reporters Sunday at a “Welcome to the Super Bowl” news conference.
He was typically gracious in discussing how thrilled the Bears were to participate in next Sunday’s NFL championship game, expressed genuine respect for their opponents, the Indianapolis Colts, and calmly but firmly assured that he and his players understood the purpose of their mission.
“This is a business trip for us,” Smith said. “We arrived Sunday in order to get the lay of the land, check out the meeting rooms … We want to make this setting as much like Halas Hall as possible.”
Good luck. Comparing the Super Bowl setting with the Bears’ Lake Forest training facility is like comparing the best of Broadway with dinner theater in Mokena. Even though he has been through it as the defensive coordinator for the St. Louis Rams, Smith has to know the Super Bowl is like … well, there’s nothing like it in American sports.
The Bears are in for the ride of their lives.
Virginia McCaskey, the team’s 84-year-old matriarch, could only smile and shake her head when the Tribune’s Don Pierson asked last week if her late father, team founder and NFL pioneer George Halas, would believe what the Super Bowl has become.
“I don’t believe it,” Mrs. McCaskey said, and she has been around for all XLI of them.
It’s doubtful even Pete Rozelle, the visionary commissioner whose marketing wizardry helped create the modern NFL, would have foreseen the worldwide phenomenon his championship game has become. It’s televised to 232 countries, broadcast in 33 languages, and millions are shelled out for broadcast rights, billions accrued in sponsorship fees.
Smith will encounter more reporters than there are people (about 1,600) in his hometown of Big Sandy, Texas, at each press event down here. And they’ll all be on the trail of a “fresh” story line.
Football may be a game to the viewing public, but to the coaches it’s the business on which their livelihoods depend. They’re not going to brook any nonsense. The player who succumbs to the siren song of Miami nightlife–hey, it has happened before–probably isn’t long for either roster.
“We have real men on our team,” Smith said, insisting he’s not concerned.
Of course, conventional wisdom views ultra-cool Miami as an incongruous setting for these homespun Bears. Whereas rollicking, boisterous, pre-Katrina New Orleans was regarded as the perfect venue for their rambunctious ’85 forebears, Smith’s crew (with a few notable exceptions) is a relatively sedate group that might be more at home up the road at Disney World.
But Miami it is, and they arrived Sunday. Security concerns being what they are, no fans were on hand to greet the Bears’ plane when it landed at Miami International Airport. Several go-get-’em signs were visible along the route to their hotel, but well-wishers were being kept at a good distance.
