Da Bearssss

For the first time in 21 years, my hometown’s American football team, the Chicago Bears, are headed to the Super Bowl in Miami. The Super Bowl is the top title in American professional football.

To real Chicagoans, the team name is pronounced “duh baresssss” with a longer “s”. These days, anyone living in Chicago—wherever they’re from—will probably pronounce it that way, even if only for effect. Maybe it's sort of a tribal indicator.

The only Super Bowl I ever watched form start to finish was the year the Bears won. The truth is, I never really liked American football, preferring baseball. Since moving to New Zealand, where the American sport is called “gridiron”, I discovered rugby which I prefer to American football (that’s not saying much, really, because most of the time I’m not interested in that, either).

I’ll probably watch the Super Bowl this year—for the second time ever. And, of course, I’ll be cheering for the Bears.

Update: The Bears will face the Indianapolis Colts in the Super Bowl in two weeks in an all-Midwest contest as the two neighbouring states battle it out. What I think is odd, though, is that this is the first time in the 41-year history of the Super Bowl that a team has an African-American coach. Both the Bears and the Colts coaches are African-American. What took so long?