Everyone loves some good, honest, unbiased football analysis, but maybe Mike Ditka could learn to choose his words more carefully.
Dikta said he doesn't think Jay Cutler's a winner, and he thinks the Packers are going to win the NFC North in 2009. These conclusions aren't all that ridiculous in and of themselves. It's the way says them.
Ditka told the Green Bay Press-Gazette that he thought the Packers would win the NFC North this year -- which he still calls the NFC Central, because God knows Dikta can't be troubled to learn the correct name for a division he gets paid to talk about on ESPN -- and that he wouldn't pick the Bears just because it's the politically correct thing to do. And he's right. If he really thinks the Packers are going to win the NFC North --- and they might --- then he should say so. That's his job.
What's not his job is to be so condescending, to act like any Bears team that wasn't a part of his era is inferior. Since his heyday with the Bears, Ditka has had exactly zero in the way of actual football success. His post-1985 years were marked by a DWI, tirades with fans, retirement, and then a return in 1997 with the New Orleans Saints in which Ditka traded every single draft pick for Ricky Williams. Ditka not only didn't win in New Orleans; he crippled the franchise for years.
Since then, Ditka has taken his show on the road, occasionally popping up on ESPN to offer some sort of half-baked analysis about "playing hard" and "doing the right things," as if that should be allowed to pass for football analysis in 2009. And this is the man who gets regally to preside over Chicago football opinion?
Not for us. Ditka can believe whatever he wants. He can be as "politically incorrect," in his words, as he likes. We're going to stop caring. About 15 years too late.
Eamonn Brennan is a Chicago-based writer, editor and blogger. You can also read him at Yahoo! Sports, Mouthpiece Sports Blog, and Inside The Hall, or at his personal site, eamonnbrennan.com. Follow him on Twitter.
