Mike Ditka, the Hall of Fame tight end and Super Bowl-winning coach who became the face of Chicago Bears football, died at 86, his family said Friday.
No one embodied the franchise more. Ditka was a Pro Football Hall of Fame tight end, the coach of the 1985 Bears — the only team in franchise history to win a Super Bowl — and, for decades afterward, a ubiquitous television analyst and celebrity promoter. His face, once described as “a clenched fist,” even resembled the bear on the team logo and became familiar to millions, first as a player starting in 1961, then as Bears coach from 1982 to 1992, and finally from the broadcast booth.
After the Bears dismissed him following the 1992 season, Ditka moved almost immediately into television, joining NBC as an analyst on NFL Live and as a color commentator. Fired by the New Orleans Saints in 2000, he spent the 2000 and 2001 seasons as a studio analyst on CBS’s The NFL Today. He joined ESPN in 2004, appearing on Sunday NFL Countdown, NFL Live and Monday Night Countdown, and worked the booth for Monday Night Football games in 2007 and 2008 alongside Mike Greenberg and Mike Golic. In 2016 ESPN shifted him to remote SportsCenter analysis so he could work from home. He also appeared regularly on Chicago’s ESPN 1000 radio.
The Bears said in a statement: “Mike’s impact on the Chicago Bears organization, over decades as a player, coach, and proud icon and ambassador for our organization, is immeasurable. His integral role in bringing world championships to our city and our franchise, both as a player and as our coach, established prominence and excellence at a world-class level, but also created a lifetime of cherished memories in the hearts and minds of Bears fans that will last for generations.”
Ditka played collegiately at Pittsburgh, near his hometown of Aliquippa, Pennsylvania, and spent only six seasons in Chicago before owner-coach George Halas traded the outspoken star to the Philadelphia Eagles. He later played and served as an assistant coach for the Dallas Cowboys, then ended his NFL head-coaching career with the Saints in 1999.
He became the quintessential Chicagoan anyway, opening a restaurant and keeping a home in the city long after his analyst duties took him elsewhere.