What is greatness? How do you define it? How do you separate degrees of it?



Those were the questions posed to the esteemed Don Pierson and me when we were asked to put together a list of the top 100 greatest Bears of all-time as a part of our soon-to-be released Chicago Bears Centennial Scrapbook.



Since the list is all anybody wants to talk about this week, I thought some explaining was in order.



The project was complicated by a number of factors. We had to compare players with completely different responsibilities — quarterbacks and kickers, for instance. We had to compare players from different eras of football –two-way players with one-down specialists, players who played obsolete positions with players whose gaudy statistics mostly are reflections of their generation, Bears who played in a 14-team league with those who played in a 32-team league. We had to decide who came after Walter Payton, the clear No. 1 player on our list.



In...