Steve McMichael reaches across the table for a handful of Mongo nachos, plopping a mound of corn chips, beef, queso and olives onto his plate and taking a moment to catch his breath. If the wooden chairs at McMichael’s Romeoville sports bar were equipped with seat belts, now might be a good time to buckle in.

This intermission won’t last long and for the past 20 minutes, McMichael’s sermon has been fast-paced and all over the place, the ruminations of a Bears legend explaining the meaning of life. Or something like that.


Even for an audience of one, McMichael understands how to be captivating, mixing detailed old stories with off-color jokes and philosophical musings and driving it all home with his emphatic tone and distinct Texas drawl.

One minute, he is passionately pushing his next crusade — to require shoulder pads at every level of football to be fitted with a neck collar to reduce the whiplash effect that accompanies concussions. The next minute, he is glancing over his head at a framed jersey and photo from the 1987 Pro Bowl and lamenting how his hiked-up uniform pants always used to, um, make him quite uncomfortable below the belt.


McMichael is dressed like the Terminator. Black sunglasses on his head, black leather coat, black crew-neck T-shirt, black pants, black boots. But suddenly the former Bears defensive lineman has found himself in a deeply reflective moment, appreciative of all the spoils his football career has provided.

He wants the people of Chicago to understand how deeply blessed he has felt for nearly 40 years to bask in their adulation.

Sure, McMichael spent 13 seasons with the Bears fueled by his intense inner drive. But, he says, he also felt an obligation to give all those bare-chested, barking maniacs in the stands a little more. That’s part of the reason he practiced with such intensity and played with reckless abandon. That’s part of the reason he always felt an extra urge to put on a show.

“A Monster of the Midway is an entertainer,” he says.

McMichael is now thinking about all those times he stopped to sign autographs, to crack a few jokes, to spend time with the adoring masses. His voice gets quieter.

Steve McMichael enjoys a respite on the Bears bench during a 1991 game. (Bob Fila / Chicago Tribune)

“You know what was always the worst thing I ever had to do?” McMichael says. “I would stand out there after training camp and there’d be thousands of people. They bring their kids and they’ve got them shoved up there (against the ropes) to get autographs. And I’d stay as long as I could. But now I’m going to be late for meetings. Or I have to go get dinner and get cleaned up. And I’d have to leave some of those little kids without an autograph.”

He pauses and swallows.

“That was the worst I’ve ever felt about myself. Honestly.”

He shakes his head and exhales. “It was the worst I ever felt about myself.”

And this, he laments in vivid detail, from a guy who was once the victim of an unfortunate bait-and-switch with a stripper in a seedy pocket of Thailand.

“And that," McMichael announces, "is why I’ll never go back to Bangkok! Mongo has been ignorant!”

His eyes are the size of golf balls. He is grinning ear to ear. . Indeed, things are not always as they appear.


This is the quintessential McMichael experience. Some more-than-meets-the-eye introspection punctuated with a ribald quip. This, it seems clear, is why a full 34 years after the Bears won their only Super Bowl, McMichael remains one of the most colorful and compelling characters from Chicago’s most iconic team.

* * *

‘It’s 1984 and we’re walking out to play the Hogs and John Riggins in the playoffs. I heard a dog barking nonstop in the tunnel. I thought to myself, “What do they have some kind of mean (expletive) Frisbee dog coming out here to perform?” But then I looked around and I realized it was me.’

* * *

Any offensive player who played for the Bears in the ’80s can hear the echoes.

“Come out of that (expletive) huddle!”

This was McMichael’s method of challenging his teammates on the other side of the ball, of provoking them, of letting them know that, even in practice, they needed to bring everything they had or risk being embarrassed.

“The only way you can get a tired offensive lineman to bust his ass is to piss him off,” McMichael says.

This, McMichael believes, is how you set a tone, how you create a mindset.

It’s the same reason he took time before almost every game to wander to the 50-yard line. Just to stand. Just to let his blood boil. Just to let his eyes grow wide and his competitive juices flow.

“I was building up my resolve,” he explains. “You know what’s in the heart of a champion? Fear of failure. It’s the fear of his personal failure that drives him more than anything else.”

Still, McMichael also loved daring opponents to notice his maniacal look and to decide how to process it.

Long after his retirement, he was approached by former Vikings quarterback Wade Wilson, who immediately brought up that customary midfield staredown.

Says McMichael: “I asked him what he thought about it. He said, ‘We all thought, “Look at that crazy (expletive).” ’ I told him I’m glad it had its desired effect.”

The Buccaneers' James Wilder is stopped by the Bears' Steve McMichael (76) and Wilber Marshall during a game in October 1987. (Ed Wagner Jr. / Chicago Tribune)

In the rich history of the Chicago Bears, a franchise that prides itself on grit, toughness and loyalty, no offensive or defensive player has ever played more games than McMichael’s 191.

To be clear, those were all in a row. From Week 7 of 1981 until Week 18 of 1993. His entire Bears career. Through eight knee surgeries. Never a game missed.

“That’s resolve,” McMichael says. “You find out who you are, my friend. And when that adrenaline is flowing, baby, that’s the painkiller that can’t be matched anywhere in the world. That’s the juice you’re going to miss when you can’t do it anymore.”

That one number — 191 — speaks volumes.

“It’s incomprehensible,” says longtime teammate Dan Hampton, who played for 12 seasons and 157 games and was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Hampton admits he wanted to despise McMichael. And all these years later he knows exactly why he never could. Hampton was born in Oklahoma and played at Arkansas, a Southwest Conference rival of McMichael’s Texas Longhorns. Hampton can still feel the sting of losses to Texas his junior and senior years.

“I grew up hating Texas,” Hampton says. “And nobody typified Texas more than Steve McMichael. He was loud. He was brash. It was that ‘Everything is bigger and better in Texas’ kind of thing.”

So when the Patriots threw McMichael away in 1980 and the Bears later grabbed him off the curb as a reclamation project, Hampton wasn’t expecting to be gaining a dependable teammate much less a lifelong friend.

But behind the boisterous and barbaric exterior, Hampton quickly realized how damn hard McMichael worked, how much he pushed to get the most out of himself and others around him. During the rise of the vaunted Bears defense in the early- to mid-1980s, no player took the pursuit of excellence more seriously.

Hampton loved that dedication, loved watching the defense feed off McMichael’s rollicking energy and loved seeing the Bears offense fight to match the tenacity.

Says former Bears coach Mike Ditka: “Steve gave an air about not giving a damn. And he gave an air about not being a really smart guy. But he is. He has always been a smart guy. And he did give a damn.”


Hampton recalls the Saturday nights when he and McMichael would get their knees drained in order to play. He fondly remembers the plane rides back from road games with the two of them dulling their pain with a couple of cigars and a liter of Crown Royal.


On game days, when either of them would make a big play, there was never a showy sack dance. McMichael and Hampton would just look each other in the eye, smile and recite their shared catchphrase. “Now you’re talking pro football!”

“And we’d just laugh,” Hampton says. “Like, hey, this is who we are. This is what we do.”

* * *

‘If you think I’m something special, I’m happy to agree with you.’

* * *

It’s 9:26 on a June Sunday morning and the line of Bears fans snaking down River Road in Rosemont has begun pouring into the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center for Day 3 of the Bears100 Celebration.

Ten minutes earlier, a “Chasing Great” panel began in Hall A featuring current Pro Bowl Bears Kyle Fuller and Charles Leno discussing the 2019 team’s Super Bowl pursuit. But at this moment, the gathering in the autographs line is far larger.

McMichael is behind a row of curtains preparing for his hour-long signing session and has not yet seen that the line for his table is, at this point, at least three times as long as the one funneling toward Matt Nagy and Ryan Pace.

As usual, McMichael is a bit hyper, raring to go.

“Can I get started a few minutes early?” he asks a convention worker.

“You’re going to want to,” the man answers. “Your line is the longest we’ve seen so far. It’s already practically out the front door.”

McMichael nods, smiles widely and extends both his arms.

“And whyyyyy wouldn’t it be?” he booms. “The ancient Greeks called me a demigod!”

On the surface, it may sound haughty. But it’s not that. At least not entirely. For nearly four decades now, McMichael has been amazed that the affection Bears fans show him hasn’t receded. He’s constantly energized by their energy.

That’s why during every interaction like this, at every public event and in every random encounter, McMichael strives to give his followers a true sampling of the Mongo experience. A moment they’ll feel good about, a one-liner they’ll tell their friends and family about.

“I know how most divas treat people. Like (expletive) on their shoe,” McMichael says. “People come up to me and say, ‘I don’t mean to bother you …’ Bother me? If you think I’m something special, I’m happy to agree with you."

Adds Hampton: “He always understood that without the fans we were just a bunch of Sasquatches out there ramming into each other.”

Lisa Nowak of Skokie learns about football by helping Bear defensive tackle Steve McMichael suit up at a clinic on Oct. 23, 1984. (Quentin C. Dodt / Chicago Tribune)

More often than not, McMichael can’t even sign his full name without stopping to tell a joke or an old story. A middle-aged man comes to the table with a pencil drawing of the Bears defensive lineman from the ’80s. McMichael grabs it from him and before scribbling his signature takes a long look at the artist’s rendering.

“God, I used to be pretty!” he says. “Now look at me!”

An attractive woman — brunette, probably late 30s — comes to the table with a smile. She seems smitten but shy.

“You know everything in your mind right now wondering what this would be like?” McMichael cracks. “It’s all true!”

For an hour, McMichael signs everything that’s brought to him. Drawings, miniature helmets, photographs, old posters.

Against convention guidelines, he grants every request for a quick photo and signs multiple items for those bold enough to ignore the one-signature-per-person restriction. A volunteer recognizes the amount of time McMichael is spending with each fan may prevent him from getting through even half the line of people waiting.

“Guys!” he orders, “Have whatever you want Mr. McMichael to sign ready when you get up here. We need to keep this moving! Please be prepared!”

McMichael laughs and stands halfway up. “Yes!” he implores. “Please be prepared! Don’t be like John Fox’s teams!”

A roar of laughter erupts and McMichael goes back to signing.

“You know that old Looney Tunes clip? The one where the circus had been through town and it was just a little street sweeper left. That’s me now.”

To be fair, little street sweepers don’t attract this kind of following a quarter-century after their last day in the big top. This, after all, is a celebration of 99 years worth of Bears history. There is plenty for folks in this giant convention-center-turned-museum to be drawn to. A big chunk of the crowd, though, is waiting for a moment with McMichael.

“In 100 years,” he says, “I’m one of the ones who enjoyed it the most.”

* * *

‘We got off the plane drinking, brother.’

* * *

McMichael understands his popularity would not remain what it is had he not been a part of the most magical sports season Chicago has ever experienced: 1985.

The crowning of those Bears had to come where it came. In New Orleans. A few blocks from Bourbon Street. Where the Bears had spent a January week being exactly who they were — animated hell-raisers off the field and trained assassins on it.

McMichael thinks of his first night in the Big Easy and suddenly gets louder.

“Ohhhh, booyyyy!” he says, leaning back in his chair. “I didn’t realize they put Everclear in those damn Hurricanes at Pat O’Brien’s. It wasn’t long before I was out in the alley, baby. Spewing!”

His eyes bug again as he begins to chuckle.

“And then? We just went to another bar!”

McMichael estimates he had close to 30 family members with him that week, “tagging along like ducks.” Ducks, of course, with VIP access to some of the French Quarter’s most popular watering holes. But come Thursday of that week, with Super Bowl XX closing in, McMichael flipped the switch, turned off the hedonistic urges and stopped going out. Suddenly, his traveling party had more hurdles to clear to continue enjoying their revelry.

“Those (expletives) were in the back of the line,” he says. “I’m thinking, ‘See! See how you should thank me!’ ”

It was hardly insignificant that, even at 28 and in the midst of one of the most fun weeks of his life, McMichael knew how to retain focus. That’s just how that ’85 team was wired. Nothing was going to stop them from punctuating their dream season with another vicious and dominant effort.

When reality sunk in the night before the Super Bowl that beloved defensive coordinator Buddy Ryan was preparing to coach his final game with the Bears, the dejection and sadness smothered the meeting room. McMichael, though, helped block out any human-nature self-pity by impaling a metal chair into the blackboard.

The next afternoon, as the Bears prepared to take the field for the biggest game any of them would ever play, McMichael again took himself to a dark and nasty place.

“It was an out-of-body experience,” he says. “Kevin Butler tells me I was walking around the locker room in some trance and saying ‘Kill these (expletives)! Kill these (expletives)!’ And I don’t remember doing it.”


The defense, to no one’s surprise, went ahead and killed those (expletives).

The Bears allowed their first points of the postseason in the first quarter on a four-play, zero-yard Patriots field-goal drive. They knocked starting quarterback Tony Eason out of the game, then continued to pummel backup Steve Grogan.

At halftime, the Bears had held the Patriots to minus-19 total yards.

By the end of the third quarter they led 44-3.

Seven sacks. Six takeaways.

“We were a train barreling down the track,” McMichael says. “So get out of the way. That’s how you stay safe. You just step off the train tracks. The guys who didn’t got run over.”

McMichael’s only regret from that day was that he was on the sideline unwinding, pulling the tape from his hands in the fourth quarter when backup defensive tackle Henry Waechter sacked Grogan for a safety.

“Ohhhh, brother,” McMichael says. “That could have been mine. And who knows? Maybe if I had gotten that safety, I might have been Super Bowl MVP.”

Still, the win itself was the exclamation point on the most exhilarating season in Bears history. And McMichael knows exactly why that season still resonates with such power across Chicago more than three decades later.

“People view that team as a life event,” he says. “On both ends of the spectrum, good life event or bad life event, people remember everything. You remember exactly where you were sitting. You can see the tchotchkes in the room. Most of life fades. But life events? … What people experienced with that team, they will never forget.”

* * *

‘It was the biggest play nobody saw. They were all headed to the parking lot. The Jets, man. Wooooo. What dumbasses.’

* * *

The Bears were dead in the water that night Monday night in 1991, stumbling toward their first loss of the season. They trailed the visiting Jets 13-6 and when Bears linebacker Ron Cox picked up an unnecessary-roughness penalty with 2:15 left, ABC’s Al Michaels, Frank Gifford and Dan Dierdorf began offering last rites.

“You can write a finish to this one,” Michaels said. “The New York Jets, barring a disaster, will have a very happy plane ride back to Gotham.”

The Bears were out of timeouts. The Jets had the minor task of carefully killing off the final 135 seconds. That would be that.

Until …

Second-and-8, immediately after the two-minute warning. Jets running back Blair Thomas took a handoff and rambled into traffic in front of him. That’s when McMichael shed the block of guard Dwayne White, lunged to his left and plucked the ball out of Thomas’ paws as if he were pulling a grape from its stem.

Fumble forced. Fumble recovered. Bears ball.

“Dumbasses,” McMichael repeats. “All they have to do is kneel down and run the clock out and they decide to run the ball at me? Morons!”

Ninety-nine times out of 100, McMichael admits, he wouldn’t have gone after the football, more focused on getting the running back on his backside. That’s how he was trained. He hated missing tackles.

“But there?” McMichael says. “Game’s over. So what? And I was in position.”

Steve McMichael gestures while talking at his Mongo McMichaels restaurant in Romeoville on April 25, 2019. (Zbigniew Bzdak / Chicago Tribune)

The Bears turned the takeaway into a last-minute touchdown. They used overtime to steal a 19-13 victory. Damn right McMichael remains proud of that contribution, one of those dig-deep efforts that allowed him to collect one of his 33 career game balls.

McMichael smiles and wonders if maybe he missed his calling. Sure, his 95 career sacks rank third all time among defensive tackles. But maybe he also could have been a takeaway machine for those 13 seasons on the Bears defensive line.

“I’ve come to the realization that I should have started doing the Peanut Punch before Peanut (Tillman),” he says. “Goddamn that’s easy, man! If you’ve got hand-eye coordination, boom! Boom! That ball ain’t ever had a handle on it.”

Still, McMichael is quick to say those heroic moments never felt as powerful as the failures. So he fast-forwards 377 days, to the next season, to the 21-20 road loss to the Vikings that was essentially the beginning of the end of Mike Ditka’s final season as coach.

The Bears blew a 20-0 third-quarter lead that afternoon. Jim Harbaugh’s ill-advised audible and untimely pick-six started the unraveling. But McMichael can still see the Vikings’ winning touchdown playing in his head — Roger Craig on third-and-goal, leaping over the top of the Bears’ defensive line. McMichael was tangled up with right guard Brian Habib and center Kirk Lowdermilk and stood up trying to get his helmet or a hand on Craig. Instead, he was plowed like fresh snow into a heap in the end zone.

“Touchdown,” he says. “We lose the game.”

He sighs and drops a quick PSA.

“Listen up, kids!” he bellows. “On the goal line, keep … your ass … down! Like a crab!”

All these years later the sting of such moments lingers.

“Those are the things that come to a competitor’s mind first. It’s not all the glory moments,” McMichael says. “That’s like raindrops in time, all the great things you did. But it’s the few times you were out there and you (expletive) it up? Those are the first things on your mind, man. That is the fear of failure.”

* * *

‘There is more than enough room on the mountaintop. Come join us, baby.’

* * *

This has been McMichael’s message to Bears teams for the past quarter-century. If there’s any misperception still lingering that the ’85 Bears would love to remain Chicago’s only Super Bowl championship team, McMichael wants it put to rest.

“Everybody thinks we’re standing like legends on the head of a pin,” he says. “Please! Everybody’s welcome.”

Besides, McMichael says, when the current Bears are winning, business is always better for the franchise legends.

After the 2006 season, McMichael told then-coach Lovie Smith that he had to keep going to the Super Bowl. The appearance fees and autograph-signing stipends were rolling in. A great Bears team always beats the alternative.

“The modern-day perception of who the Bears are gets projected on me too,” he says. “In 2014, I was a loser!”

He laughs.

“You know that whole ‘Bear Down’ thing? As bad as they were for the last 10 years, it was like when you hear over the scanner at the cop station, ‘Officer down!’ But it was ‘Bear Down!’ Bears down, all right. Some of those teams were embarrassing.”

Now, though, with this year’s group having legitimate Super Bowl aspirations, McMichael finds himself excited about the season.

He hopes the players in the locker room at Halas Hall understand their opportunity. That rush of game days? It’s never to be taken for granted.

Steve McMichael played in 191 games during 13 seasons with the Bears and retired second on the Bears' career sacks list with 92.5. (Ed Wagner Jr / Chicago Tribune)

“The roar of that crowd. The hair on the back of your will neck stand up, brother!" he says. "I can see why those Roman gladiators could kill each other for that. Fifty-thousand people in that Colosseum? That roar? Holy (expletive)! That’s a hard wave to squelch down the old bad voice. The duality of man. That savage gets to take over.


“That rush is what brings on superhuman efforts. I see things that have never happened in football happen every week. It’s from that adrenaline, baby.”

McMichael always lived for Sundays. But he now understands he gave it all on the field for Mondays. The film sessions. The weekly peer review.

For those Bears defenses of the 1980s, there was an unspoken and unrelenting desire to make the guys next to them proud. This, McMichael says, was the currency for those teams.

“You do something special in the game, one of us would point it out. ‘Look at that! Run that back! He tore this guy’s ass up!’ ” he says. “And (often) it was on the side of the play where no one saw it. When you take time to point that stuff out, when you’re proud of that guy next to you, more of it starts happening.”

The criticism also became motivating. When McMichael was told he was “acting like a damn Mongo,” he pushed harder to showcase his intelligence.

When Shaun Gayle arrived from Ohio State in 1984, McMichael took notice of the safety’s gut.

“I started calling him ‘Roly.’ It embarrasses him and he hates it so much that he looks like an Adonis with a six pack to this day.”

McMichael chuckles.

“The greatest teams self-police. Our sarcastic humor to each other was born in truth. That little phobia you get? Ooooh, those little phobias will you drive you, won’t they, baby?”

Within that Bears defense, the desire for praise became addicting. The competition elevated.

“Everybody thought we had bounties,” McMichael says. “No. It was incentives. A hundred dollars to whoever gets to the quarterback first. It was never ‘Kill him!’ But now try telling that to a killer.”

There are those wide eyes again.

* * *

‘That’s the beauty of getting old. What you’ve done in the past just gets bigger.’

* * *

Three and a half years ago, after the Streeterville premier of ESPN’s 30-for-30 documentary “The ’85 Bears,” director Jason Hehir let a captivated theater audience in on a little secret. During a post-film panel with McMichael, Mike Singletary and film narrator Vince Vaughn, Hehir wanted his audience to understand this character they had always known as “Mongo,” the guy nicknamed after the brutish “Blazing Saddles” character who cold-cocked a horse, actually had a multitude of deeper layers.

“Honestly,” Hehir told the audience that night, “he’s one of the most intelligent and articulate people I’ve ever met.”

To which McMichael quickly interjected: “You’re ruining the gimmick!”

Indeed, when Hehir set out to make his film, offering a behind-the-curtain glimpse at the brotherhood that drove the ’85 Bears, McMichael was nowhere near the top of his list of “have to have” interview subjects. The young director was so much more eager to dial in with Mike Ditka, with Jim McMahon, with Singletary, with Hampton, with Gary Fencik.

With McMichael? “I was looking for two or three nuggets that’d be good for a laugh.”

Hehir admits he had his preconceptions, preparing to talk to a boisterous former lineman who had also spent several years in professional wrestling. And when they first met, Hehir says “a wind blew through the room.”

“He was loud. He was gruff. And he shook everybody’s hand twice as hard as it had ever been shaken,” Hehir says.

Hehir still refers to McMichael as “a Falstaffian figure,” brazen and cheerful and sometimes bawdy. And yet … “Five minutes into our conversation, you’re getting this Confucian wisdom.”

When the filmmakers began peppering McMichael with questions, they became enamored with how much range he had, how he could transition from bombastic and crude shock jock to deeply reflective raconteur.

In discussing the mini-scandal of Super Bowl week — when quarterback Jim McMahon was erroneously alleged to have called all the women in New Orleans sluts — McMichael offered an unnecessary and boorish defense of that purported insult. “Listen, brother,” he said. “When you walk down the street in a town and a girl will show you her boobs for a 20-cent strand of plastic beads? What would you call ‘em? Partiers?”

Yet McMichael also steered the conversation down deeper philosophical paths, professing his undying respect for Buddy Ryan, his sincere admiration for his teammates and making it clear how damn proud he was to have been part of that ’85 squad.

All those players, he explained, demanded greatness from themselves and, in turn, from everyone around them. “That’s when it’s perfect and pure and happiness abounds in that locker room,” McMichael said.

By the time Hehir’s documentary premiered, he understood the ’85 Bears couldn’t have been the ’85 Bears without the blend of passion, sarcasm and viciousness McMichael brought.

“He was the id of that team,” Hehir says. “Of the Monsters of the Midway, he was the ultimate monster. He was the one on that team who reveled in being that kind of animalistic predator. He was the one who reveled in being the loose cannon, the loose screw in that machine.”

McMichael played the role as well as he could.

* * *

‘Here’s something I’m finally ready to admit about the ’85 Bears and myself. We like the limelight, brother. We enjoy being on stage.’

* * *

Yes, Steve McMichael has a verse for “The Super Bowl Shuffle.” One of the most aggravated critics of the stunt the ’85 Bears pulled to record the Shuffle the day after the season’s only loss in Miami, McMichael now gets in on the act.

Some call me Mongo, some call me Ming

Now you’re finding out I can really sing

Hampton and Otis needed a fix

I found out I’m a pretty good mix

We’re going to play it loud, we’re going to break your hearts

You’re going to find out we’re more than three old farts

I didn’t come here to feathers ruffle

I just came here to do this damn Super Bowl Shuffle

You won’t find that verse on the 45 of the original Grammy-nominated song. It’s saved exclusively for on-stage performances by the Chicago 6, the band McMichael is happily a part of with Hampton and Otis Wilson plus musicians John McFarland, Matt Kammerer and Ed Kammerer.

Former Bears defensive lineman Steve McMichael performs with other members of The Chicago 6 in Grant Park on Thursday, July 25, 2019. (Armando L. Sanchez / Chicago Tribune)

This summer, among their many gigs, the Chicago 6 played for a packed house at Ribfest in Naperville and at a July concert at the Jay Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park.

McMichael sings and plays the rhythm guitar. He can skillfully cover Neil Diamond and Merle Haggard, Lynyrd Skynyrd and Toby Keith. “And when Otis sings Motown,” he says, “I’m a Pip.”

Hampton and Wilson love to needle McMichael as “Foghorn Leghorn.” The scouting reports overlap nicely. Loquacious. Blustery. Full of self-spun wisdom.

“It’s like he’s vaccinated with the Victrola needle,” Hampton says. “He just wants to tell stories. He’ll keep talking and talking. And eventually I have to say, ‘Hey! Hold on! We have to start the next song!’”


When Hampton put the band back together a half-dozen years ago, it was apparent McMichael hadn’t sung for a bit. But then he dialed in. And now?

“On a scale of 1-10, he’s gone from a 5 or 6 to an 8 or 9,” Hampton says. “He has really blossomed. Like anything with Steve, if it means something to him, he works at it.”

For starters, McMichael’s musical endeavor allows him an opportunity to be what he is at heart, a nonstop showman. When he grabs the mic, when he tells a tall tale, when he leans back to belt out some Hank Williams Jr., it all gives him a reminder of “mattering to the throng.”

On top of that, there’s a different rush that comes every time he steps on stage.

“That’s a little bit of the juice I was talking about, man," he says. "It’s that angst. That’s the best way to describe it. You know you’re about to do something. But is it going to turn out like you want it to?”

* * *

‘When you hit 61, you don’t stop and have any of those long gazes into the mirror anymore. You’ll see flaws that didn’t used to be there. I don’t pose in the mirror anymore. No. No.’

* * *

It has been 24 years since McMichael played his last NFL game. Ironically, of course, for the hated Green Bay Packers. For decades, McMichael has had his at-the-ready quip for curious or still-disgruntled fans who wonder how in the hell one of the most proud and beloved players in Bears history could have even fathomed to put on that green jersey and that cheddar-yellow helmet.

“For 13 years, I helped the Bears beat the Packers every year,” he says. “I whupped their ass, right? So the last year, I went up there on my last leg and I wasn’t any good anymore. So I stole their money and whipped their ass again!”

Even McMichael knows that’s just a convenient wisecrack, concealing the honest-to-God reason he went 175 miles north for his last dance. “I wasn’t in the habit of turning down $500,000.”

Now McMichael is 61 and feeling the effects of his pedal-to-the-metal life. His neck is in constant discomfort. The pitting edema in his knees can be debilitating, like two water balloons filling up. He can no longer mow his lawn in one shot and often tags his wife in to finish.

For the most part, though, McMichael still has his wits and his wit about him — clearly — even as football’s chronic traumatic encephalopathy scourge has engulfed many of his contemporaries.

“And it’s a glass half-full if the brain damage is coming on,” McMichael cracks. “For I have seen things that I would like to forget. They are burned into my memory. Like a pho-to-graph-ic ne-ga-tive, baby.”

Because this remains a family publication, McMichael’s photographic negative can’t be developed here. His tales about Hurricane Hannah or his 1980s escapades on Rush Street will have to remain in the darkroom.

Naturally, that was also the approach in 2004 when the former Bears great wrote his first book: “Steve McMichael’s Tales from the Chicago Bears Sideline.”

Steve McMichael shows off a copy of his book on the 1985 Bears during the Chicago Tribune's "Chicago Live!" event at the Chicago Theatre Downstairs on Feb. 10, 2011. (Chris Sweda / Chicago Tribune)

“I had teammates calling me up, ‘You didn’t put my name in there, did you?’” McMichael says. “No. I did not. I kept us all heroes, brother. I can still make a lot of money being a hero.”

Still, it’s evident McMichael enjoyed himself back in the day.

“Ooooh, the skulduggery,” he says. “It was almost like devil worship!”

He laughs and pauses for a moment.

“Ohhhh, brother, did we have fun! Poor Honey Bears got fired!”

After football, McMichael tried pro wrestling. And then he coached the Chicago Slaughter to a Continental Indoor Football League championship. Later, he ran for mayor in Romeoville and lost.

Now McMichael has moved on to a different chapter. Yes, he is retired. But he still has the band plus his duties as a restaurant owner at Mongo McMichael’s in Romeoville plus a Sunday morning pregame radio gig to keep busy. And even though he has lost 40 yards off the tee box, he’ll happily accept most any invitation to play in a golf event.

Football once was McMichael’s obsession. But it also forced him to be single-minded and necessarily selfish. Now he can spread his wings.

He is, in his own words, “the happiest I’ve ever been in my private life,” enjoying time with Misty, his wife of 18 years, and his 11-year-old daughter, Macy.

Macy was born with the McMichael smart-ass gene. A few years back when father and daughter were playfully wrestling, McMichael used his leverage to get the upper hand.

“Don’t worry,” he told his daughter. “One day you’re going to be tall like Daddy.”

Replied Macey: “But not as fat, right?”

McMichael was both insulted and deeply proud.

McMichael insists he never could have been a dad when he played. It would have made him way too soft, bringing out the sensitive side he now has to use when chaperoning school field days, overseeing sleepovers and driving his daughter and her friends to the mall.

“We have to go into every kids store,” he says. “The McCaskeys didn’t pay me enough.”

There’s a young neighborhood boy from down the block who frequently rings McMichael’s doorbell looking for Macey. And whether she’s home or not, McMichael delivers the same message.

Not today, son.

The doorstep is now his 50-yard line.

“Like stray cats coming around here,” he says. “Jesus. I’ve got my stun baton ready.”

* * *

‘If I wouldn’t do it all over again, what would I have to remember? I would do it all over again because that is what defines me. Going out and playing that game was worth every pain that I’m in right now.’

* * *

With what’s left of the nacho pile getting cold, McMichael senses an obligation to punctuate his sermon. Suddenly, he is right back in another milestone moment: his first day as a Bear and that first visit to George Halas’ office.

“It was like I was walking into a 1920s gangster movie and he was James Cagney,” McMichael says. “And you know what he said to me? ‘I’ve heard what kind of dirty rat you are at practice. Don’t change, see!’”

McMichael grinned and nodded at the Bears owner. The message was received.

“He wanted me to stir those (expletives) up,” he says. “He knew (going) half-ass wasn’t going to pay the piper.”

McMichael’s career took off from there with an effort to prod his teammates and challenge himself plus an internal push to make Buddy Ryan proud.

McMichael gladly points out he was the third man to sign the famous letter defensive players sent to Halas in 1981, pleading Ryan be kept around as coordinator when head coach Neill Armstrong was fired.

Former Bears defensive tackle Steve McMichael wears two championship rings, including his Super Bowl XX ring. (Erin Hooley / Chicago Tribune)

McMichael had long respected Ryan’s accomplishments — as the defensive line coach for the Super Bowl champion Jets and later for the “Purple People Eaters” in Minnesota. He was magnetized by Ryan’s leadership style and motivated hourly to win him over.

“I knew I needed him to stay around long enough to play me. Then I knew I had done something, when that old man trusted me.

“It was never your talent he was worried about. It was whether you were too stupid to play for him.”


McMichael started as “76” — just a number to the defensive boss. By Super Bowl XX, he had become “Tex,” a key part of the leadership nucleus that legendary defense needed to realize their full potential.

In the latter stages of Ryan’s life, Hampton and Fencik went to visit their ailing coach on his farm in Kentucky. During the stay, they called McMichael. Ryan jumped on the phone and greeted one of his favorite players with all the energy he could muster.

“Come out of that huddle, Tex!”

Even then, with McMichael in his late 50s, that small show of affection felt invigorating.

Says Hampton: “Just like a child wants his parents’ approval and acceptance, Buddy had a knack for making you want to be accepted by him. Almost 30 years later, that was still the same pat on the head we all wanted.”

For those bold enough to label the ’85 Bears a one-hit wonder, to question why only one Lombardi Trophy is on display at Halas Hall, McMichael suggests they kick rocks.

“Maybe everybody should be happy as a two-peckered goat that a bunch of slappies could win one,” he says.

He points to a five-year stretch from 1984 to 1988 when the Bears won 62 regular-season games and five straight division championships. In the Super Bowl era, the organization hasn’t had another half-decade stretch that’s even in the same stratosphere.

But that’s all just bar chatter.

What means so much more to McMichael is remembering how alive he always felt chasing excellence.

“A gambler doesn’t place the bet because he wants the juice of winning,” McMichael says. “The juice happens when he places the bet and he still doesn’t know if he’s going to win or lose. That’s the juice."

He’s smiling again.

“If you really want to enjoy your life and get everything you can out of it,” he says, “make sure you understand that it’s the journey that’s the reward, baby. It’s not the destination. The journey is what makes you who you are. The mountaintop is great. But how you got there is what you remember.”