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1985 Chicago Bears NFL Football Pocket Schedule Walter Payton Radio 720 WGN.

The Chicago Bears are a professional American football team based in Chicago. The Bears compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) North division. The Bears have won nine NFL Championships, including one Super Bowl, and hold the NFL record for the most enshrinees in the Pro Football Hall of Fame and the most retired jersey numbers. The Bears have also recorded more victories than any other NFL franchise •

The franchise was founded in Decatur, Illinois, on September 20, 1919 and became professional on September 17, 1920, and moved to Chicago in 1921. It is one of only two remaining franchises from the NFL's founding in 1920, along with the Arizona Cardinals, which was originally also in Chicago. The team played home games at Wrigley Field on Chicago's North Side through the 1970 season; they now play at Soldier Field on the Near South Side, adjacent to Lake Michigan. The Bears have a long-standing rivalry with the Green Bay Packers.

The team headquarters, Halas Hall, is in the Chicago suburb of Lake Forest, Illinois. The Bears practice at adjoining facilities there during the season, and began hosting Training Camp at Halas Hall in 2020 after major renovations •

While the Super Bowl XX champion Bears were a fixture of mainstream American pop culture in the 1980s, the Bears made a prior mark with the 1971 American TV movie Brian's Song starring Billy Dee Williams as Gale Sayers and James Caan as Brian Piccolo. The film told of how Piccolo helped Sayers recover from a devastating knee injury to return to his status as one of the league's best players, and how Sayers in turn helped the Piccolo family through Brian's fatal illness. A 2001 remake of the movie for ABC starred Sean Maher as Piccolo and Mekhi Phifer as Sayers.

The 1985 team is also remembered for recording the song "The Super Bowl Shuffle", which reached number forty-one on the Billboard Hot 100 and was nominated for a Grammy Award. The music video for the song depicts the team rapping that they are "not here to start no trouble" but instead "just here to do the Super Bowl Shuffle". The team took a risk by recording and releasing the song before the playoffs had even begun, but were able to avoid embarrassment by going on to win Super Bowl XX by a then-record margin of 46–10. That game was one of the most-watched television events in history according to the Nielsen ratings system; the game had a rating of 48.3, ranking it seventh in all-time television history.

In addition to the "Super Bowl Shuffle" rap song, the Bears' success in the 1980s – and especially the personality of head coach Mike Ditka – inspired a recurring sketch on the American sketch comedy program Saturday Night Live, called "Bill Swerski's Superfans". The sketch featured Cheers co-star George Wendt, a Chicago native, as host of a radio talk-show (similar in tone to WGN radio's "The Sportswriters"), with co-panelists Carl Wollarski (Robert Smigel), Pat Arnold (Mike Myers) and Todd O'Connor (Chris Farley). To hear them tell it, "Da Bears" and Coach Ditka could do no wrong. The sketch stopped after Ditka was fired in 1993. The sketch usually showed the panelists chugging beer and eating lots of Polish sausage, and often featured Todd getting so agitated about what was happening with the Bears that he suffered a heart attack, but quickly recovered (through self-administered CPR). The sketch also features the cast predicting unrealistic blowout victories for Bears games. Da Super Fan sketch has not been brought back by SNL, with the exception of a single appearance by Horatio Sanz as a Super Fan for the Cubs on "Weekend Update" in 2003. Outside of SNL, George Wendt reprised his role of Swerski in the opening promo of Super Bowl XL on ABC.

On TV shows based in Chicago such as The Bob Newhart Show, Married... with Children, Family Matters, Still Standing, According to Jim, Early Edition and The Bernie Mac Show, the main characters are all Bears fans, and have worn Bears' jerseys and T-shirts on some occasions. Some episodes even show them watching Bears games. Roseanne is another TV show based in Illinois (albeit not in Chicago itself) to feature the Bears as the consensus household favorite, as 'Dan Connor' John Goodman is seen wearing Bears hats in several episodes. That '70s Show featured several Bears references, as it was based in Wisconsin, home of the Packers. On one episode while the gang is at a Bears vs. Packers game, Eric comes to the seat in a Walter Payton jersey and is booed by the surrounding Packers fans. In an episode of the Disney Channel show Shake It Up, based in Chicago, recurring character Dina Garcia (Ainsley Bailey) sold scalped Chicago Bears tickets. More recently, Modern Family character Cameron Tucker has been shown as a Bears fan. In an episode of the Disney Channel show "I Didn't Do It", based in Chicago, Lindy Watson (Olivia Holt) and Logan Watson (Austin North) try to get a football signed by NFL Hall of Famer Dick Butkus after destroying their fathers Butkus signed ball, Alshon Jeffery also makes a cameo appearance as well.

Ditka's success and popularity in Chicago has led him to land analyst roles on various American football pregame shows. Ditka worked for both the NFL on NBC and CBS's The NFL Today, and he currently works on ESPN's Sunday NFL Countdown and provided Friday night analysis on the Bears on WBBM-TV's 2 on Football with former WBBM-TV sports director Mark Malone. He is also the color analyst for all local broadcasts of Bears preseason games. Ditka also co-starred himself alongside actor Will Ferrell in the 2005 comedy film Kicking & Screaming.

Also, Ditka, Dick Butkus, Walter Payton, Jim McMahon, William "Refrigerator" Perry and Brian Urlacher are among Bears figures known for their appearances in TV commercials. Urlacher, whose jersey was among the league's best-selling in 2002, was featured on Nike commercials with former Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick.

In the 1961 Hanna-Barbera animated short "Rah Rah Bear", Yogi Bear helps the Bears beat the New York Giants.The Bears were later depicted in an episode of the 1985 cartoon version of the NBC sitcom Punky Brewster, where the Bears are playing the Green Bay Packers.

Clark Griswold (Chevy Chase) from the National Lampoon's Vacation series appears in some scenes wearing a navy blue with burnt orange scripting Chicago Bears ball cap. He wears the same Chicago Bears cap throughout all four Vacation movies.

Mike Ditka, a tight end for the Bears from 1961 to 1966, was hired to coach the team by George Halas in 1982. His gritty personality earned him the nickname "Iron Mike". The team reached the NFC Championship game in 1984. In the 1985 season the fire in the Bears–Packers rivalry was re-lit when Ditka used 315-pound defensive tackle "Refrigerator" Perry as a running back in a touchdown play at Lambeau Field, against the Packers.

The Bears won their ninth NFL Championship, first since the AFL-NFL merger, in Super Bowl XX after the 1985 season in which they dominated the NFL with their then-revolutionary 46 defense and a cast of characters that recorded the novelty rap song "The Super Bowl Shuffle". The season was notable in that the Bears had only one loss, the "unlucky 13th" game of the season, a Monday night affair in which they were defeated by the Miami Dolphins. At the time, much was made of the fact that the 1972 Dolphins were the only franchise in history to have had an undefeated season and post-season.

The Dolphins came close to setting up a rematch in the Super Bowl, but lost to the New England Patriots in the AFC title game. "The Super Bowl Shuffle" was videotaped the day after that Monday night loss in Miami.

1986–2003: Post-Super Bowl era

After the 1985 Championship season, the Bears remained competitive throughout the 1980s but failed to return to the Super Bowl under Ditka. Between the firing of Ditka and the hiring of Lovie Smith, the Bears had two head coaches, Dave Wannstedt and Dick Jauron. While both head coaches led the team to the playoffs once (Wannstedt in 1994 and Jauron in 2001), neither was able to accumulate a winning record or bring the Bears back to the Super Bowl. Therefore, the 1990s was largely considered to be a disappointment.

Before the Bears hired Jauron in January 1999, Dave McGinnis (Arizona's defensive coordinator, and a former Bears assistant under Ditka and Wannstedt) backed out of taking the head coaching position. The Bears scheduled a press conference to announce the hiring before McGinnis agreed to contract terms. Soon after Jauron's hiring, Mrs. McCaskey fired her son Michael as president, replacing him with Ted Phillips and promoting Michael to chairman of the board. Phillips, the current Bears president, became the first man outside of the Halas-McCaskey family to run the team.

2004–2012: Lovie Smith era

Lovie Smith, hired on January 15, 2004, is the third post-Ditka head coach. Joining the Bears as a rookie head coach, Smith brought the highly successful Tampa 2 defensive scheme with him to Chicago. Before his second season with the Bears, the team rehired their former offensive coordinator and then Illinois head coach Ron Turner to improve the Bears' struggling offense. In 2005, the Bears won their division and reached the playoffs for the first time in four years. Their previous playoff berth was earned by winning the NFC Central in 2001. The Bears improved upon their success the following season, by clinching their second consecutive NFC North title during Week 13 of the 2006 season, winning their first playoff game since 1995, and earning a trip to Super Bowl XLI. However, they fell short of the championship, losing 29–17 to the Indianapolis Colts. Following the 2006 season, the club decided to give Smith a contract extension through 2011, at roughly $5 million per year. This comes a season after being the lowest-paid head coach in the National Football League.

The club has played in over a thousand games since becoming a charter member of the NFL in 1920. Through the 2010 season, they led the NFL in overall franchise wins with 704 and had an overall record of 704–512–42 (going 687–494–42 during the regular season and 17–18 in the playoffs) On November 18, 2010, the Bears recorded franchise win number 700 in a win against the Miami Dolphins.