Watching this team slog through another rough season, it’s hard not to feel like there is a Bears curse in Chicago now. As if the Cubs, Blackhawks and White Sox all exorcised their demons in recent years and those demons have decided to set up shop at Halas Hall. Curses are of course viewed as an excuse for poor team management. Yet at the same time it’s impossible to deny the streak of rotten luck this team has endured.
Except fans sometimes forget that the Bears are indeed cursed. It’s an established fact. Every year it’s forgotten though, replaced by hope. Then every year it surges back like some horrible, aggressive cancer. This is the curse of the Honey Bears. It’s not surprising many people don’t know about it. For the longest time it was overshadowed by the Billy Goat and Black Sox curses.
Now though? It’s leapt to the forefront as the painful stretch of losing gets longer and longer each weak. The funny part is Virginia McCaskey is apparently pissed off about it, and yet she’s the one who might be the most responsible for this turn of bad fortune in the first place.
Bears curse began in amidst greatest season in 1985
The Honey Bears were a venture embraced by late owner George Halas in 1976. It was an attempt to revamp the franchise, breath some new life into it. Cheerleaders were becoming all the rage by that time thanks to the Dallas Cowboys. Keep in mind eight years prior to this move, the Bears had gone 35-76-1. So any change was good change by that point.
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The results were almost immediate. Chicago finished .500 for the first time in eight years their first season of existence. The next year the Bears made the playoffs. From ’76 to ’85 the team was 82-67, reaching the postseason four times and winning a Super Bowl. After they were disbanded the Bears are 238-273 with nine playoff appearances and no championships.
Sports fans by their very nature are superstitious. Chicago is no different. Even Steve McMichael, the former Bears All-Pro defensive tackle admitted that the team hasn’t been the same since the Honey Bears were cast out. To get even creepier? Last time Chicago made the playoffs was 2010. That year at training camp some fans showed up as unofficial members of the squad, handing out a petition to bring the group back.
The Bears went to the NFC championship that season. Maybe it’s time somebody try to convince the McCaskey family that it’s for the good of the team to have cheerleaders again. After all, nothing else is working.
