The Chicago Bears are going to the Super Bowl. That is an unlikely sentence.

Rex Grossman is leading the Chicago Bears into the Super Bowl. That is an absolutely ludicrous sentence.

It seems as if all of Chicago is ecstatic that the Bears are in the Super Bowl, and I am no exception. Chicago is and always will be a Bears town: no other team consumes the city's thoughts like the Bears. The Cubs would come close, except for that little detail that about one third of the city hates them. That aforementioned third cheer for the White Sox fervently, but Chicago's divided baseball loyalties prevent the same support the Bears enjoy. The Bulls have never really been at the forefront of Chicago's conciousness in seasons in which Michael Jordan was not on the team, and the Blackhawks' afterthought status can be solely attributed to one Mr. William Wirtz (an article for another day if there ever was one). So even though I've lived through six Bulls championship seasons, a White Sox World Series campaign, and a couple of feeble forays into the postseason by the Cubs (due to their futile history, or at least the last 100 years or so, the excitement generated by the Cubs reaching the playoffs would be fairly similar to another team reaching the World Series, since Cubs fans figure the NL Divisional Series is pretty much as good as it can get), I've never seen the city as excited about any game as much as this one, and people older than me are telling me that this is the most excitement since 1985, when I was only three and not the best judge of these types of things.

And there's that reference: 1985. In some way I feel bad for these Bears. There will be thousands of articles written about them this week, and I fully expect 75% of them to at least mention the 1985 team in passing (the other 25% will primarily be dealing with just what the fuck it is that Rex Grossman is thinking about out there on the field. The answer, incidentally: sluts. 2, 3, sometimes 8 at a time). If I were a member of this current version of the Bears, this fact that I was constantly being compared to the 1985 team would annoy me greatly. I would want my accomplishments to stand on their own, rather than being measured against a standard that would be pretty close to impossible to match.

I say it's impossible to match the 85 Bears accomplishments in the minds of Chicagoans not because of any particular deficiencies (which doesn't mean this team has no deficiencies; for example: Grossman, and his aformentioned preoccupation with sluts, when he should be more focused on things like reading a defense or feeling the pass rush), but because of the changing landscape of the NFL. Simply put, the NFL today lacks greatness, at least on a team level.

This immeasurable quality of greatness is one that interests me a lot. I am not sure what makes me think that the Bears, 49ers, Giants, and Redskins of the 80s were great, while the majority of the teams today are merely mediocre. Why should I choose to exult the 85 Bears while remaining fairly lukewarm on the current incarnation?

The immediate temptation is to say that free agency has changed the NFL, and the parity that followed hurt teams to the point that they will never be as good as they were before free agency. Though I do think parity plays a role in how I view teams today, free agency has not become enough of a factor to offset the advances in the complexity of the game, nor of the increases in size and speed of the players. The fact of the matter is that if you could somehow have the 1985 Bears play the 2006 version, I'd bet on this year's team. Brian Urlacher would probably be faster than everyone on the 85 team, except for maybe Willie Gault. Though Grossman makes questionable decision after questionable decision, he has faced defenses with much greater complexity than anything Jim McMahon (or Steve Fuller) saw all year. The current Bears would enjoy a significant size advantage on both the offensive and defensive lines. I do think Mike Ditka could kick Lovie Smith's ass in a fistfight, however. Still, if I think one team could beat another one head to head, why would I think the losing team great and the winning team just average?

Of course, in this specific instance, this conversation becomes moot if the Bears lose, especially if they lose badly. I've always been interested in what fans' opinions are about a team that manages to get to the Super Bowl, only to be utterly annihilated. Before parity, this seemed to happen in the Super Bowl every other year, usually to the AFC team, and I never knew how I would feel if I had been the fan of that team. Are you happy that your team managed to win its conference? I mean, that is a pretty impressive accomplishment, and one that doesn't happen too often. However, your favorite team still got embarassed in front of billions of people. Further, your team is only going to be remembered for getting blown out in the Super Bowl. I'm sure the 1989 Denver Broncos had a very nice year; they may have even beaten Cleveland in stomach-punching fashion that year, but the only thing I'm going to remember about that team is how the San Francisco 49ers continually abused them for the entirety of the Super Bowl. Same thing goes for the 1994 San Diego Chargers. How do their fans feel about these well-publicized dominations. Unfortunately, I do not know any Denver Broncos fans, and the only Chargers fan I know was without access to a TV in 1994, as he was working as a migrant farmer in California under the alias Javier Vazquez. As a result, I've never been able to ask anyone about this. Hopefully, I won't experience it firsthand on Sunday.