Windy City Gridiron
In the next episode of our limited series, ‘85 at 40, Bill Zimmerman and Jeff Berckes sit down with Chicago Bears legend, safety Gary Fencik.
Gary provided us with several excellent answers on various topics. He discussed the letter [see below] he penned to George Halas, urging him to keep Buddy Ryan as defensive coordinator when he hired Mike Ditka. He discussed what made Buddy Ryan and the 46 defense so strong. He discussed William Perry’s emergence in 1985. He discussed how the way the game was played back then is long gone when looking at today’s game. And, of course, we talked to him about the Super Bowl Shuffle.
Fencik admitted that he didn’t know the title was going to have “Super Bowl in it, and he had no idea what it would become.
“You can look at my words, I had no reference to Super Bowl. None,” Fencik explained. “Willie Gault organized this as a good gesture, we had no idea there was going to be a video requirement, Willie said here’s the words you can change whatever you want, I didn’t talk to anyone about it, and then suddenly they are like, you have to do a video, and we were like, no we don’t have to do anything. But we end up doing the video, of course, the day after we lose the only game of the season. But like, Hampton wouldn’t do it, McMichael wouldn’t do it, they thought it was stupid… All of a sudden, I hear that it’s called Super Bowl Shuffle, I mean, the NFL would sue you today, right? For copyright infringement? Did we ask the Bears to wear our jerseys? No. We were really naive.”
Fencik continued, “[A documentarian told me] You don’t appreciate what a change that song was for the entire NFL. All of a sudden, it wasn’t just following these players on the field, but now you’re seeing them off the field. And like it or not, you guys were the early part of rap music. I got my gold record downstairs, we made a platinum video, and it really got out of control.”
If you are interested in the 1985 Chicago Bears and love Bears history, you won’t want to miss this interview.
To watch this interview, you can do so on the 2nd City Gridiron YouTube page below:
To listen to the interview, you can do that wherever you get your podcasts on the 2nd City Gridiron podcast feed or use the player below:
Here’s that now-famous letter that Fencik and his defensive teammates wrote to George Halas, letting Papa Bear know how important defensive coordinator Buddy Ryan was to their defense. Halas did make a head coaching change following the 1981 season; Ryan and the defensive staff were retained at their request, and the Bears’ defense became one of the greatest and most iconic in the history of the NFL.
