The Chicago Bears are a professional American football team based in Chicago, Illinois. They are members of the North Division of the National Football Conference (NFC) in the National Football League (NFL). The Bears have won nine (9) NFL Championships (eight pre-merger, and one Super Bowl). The Bears hold the NFL record for the most enshrinees in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, with 27 members, and the most retired jersey numbers (13). The Bears have also recorded more regular season and overall victories than any other NFL franchise. The franchise recorded its 700th win on November 18, 2010.
The club's first logo was introduced in the early 1950s as a black bear on top of a football. They kept this until 1962, when the Bears trademark 'C' logo was first introduced.The change in their logo from the black bear was due to the addition of logos on helmets, which pro football teams started adding in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Unlike some NFL franchises that have had many different looks over time, the Bears have kept the wishbone 'C' for over 40 years.In 1974, the team decided to keep the same white 'C' logo but to change the color of it from white to orange with a white trim. This is the current logo; however, the club has since introduced alternative logos, including a black bear inside of the orange wishbone 'C', introduced in 1995, and an orange bear head, introduced in 1999.
Soldier Field, located on Lake Shore Drive in Chicago, is the current home to the Bears. The Bears moved into Soldier Field in 1971 after outgrowing Wrigley Field, the team's home for 50 years, and Northwestern University's residential neighbors objected to their playing at Dyche Stadium, now called Ryan Field. After the AFL-NFL Merger, the newly merged league wanted their teams to play in stadiums that could hold at least 50,000 fans. Even with the portable bleachers that the team brought into Wrigley, the stadium could still only hold 46,000. Soldier Field's playing turf was changed from astroturf to natural grass in time for the start of the 1988 season. The stadium was the site of the infamous Fog Bowl playoff game between the Bears and Philadelphia Eagles.
The 1985 team is also remembered for recording the song "The Super Bowl Shuffle", which reached number forty-one on the Billboard Hot 100 and was nominated for a Grammy Award.[75][76] The music video for the song depicts the team rapping that they are "not here to start no trouble" but instead "just here to do the Super Bowl Shuffle". The team took a risk by recording and releasing the song before the playoffs had even begun, but were able to avoid embarrassment by going on to win Super Bowl XX by a then-record margin of 46-10. That game was one of the most watched television events in history according to the Nielsen ratings system; the game had a rating of 48.3, ranking it seventh in all-time television history.In addition to the "Super Bowl Shuffle" rap song, the Bears' success in the 1980s - and especially the personality of head coach Mike Ditka - inspired a recurring sketch on the American sketch comedy program Saturday Night Live, called "Bill Swerski's Superfans". The sketch featured Cheers co-star George Wendt, a Chicago native, as host of a radio talk-show (similar in tone to WGN radio's "The Sportswriters"), with co-panelists Carl Wollarski (Robert Smigel), Pat Arnold (Mike Myers) and Todd O'Connor (Chris Farley). To hear them tell it, "Da Bears" and Coach Ditka could do no wrong. The sketch stopped after Ditka was fired in 1993. The sketch usually showed the panelists drinking lots of beer and eating lots of Polish sausage, and often featured Todd getting so agitated about what was happening with the Bears that he suffered a heart attack, but quickly recovered (through self-administered CPR). The sketch also features the cast predicting unrealistic blowout victories for Bears games. Da Super Fan sketch has not been brought back by SNL, with the exception of a single appearance by Horatio Sanz as a Super Fan for the Cubs on Weekend Update in 2003. Outside of SNL, George Wendt reprised his role of Swerski in the opening promo of Super Bowl XL on ABC.
The Green Bay Packers are the one of the Bears' biggest rivals since their team's inception in 1920. The team currently leads the series 92-86-6, and both teams have met twice in the postseason. The Bears won the 1941 meeting 33-14 and eventually defeated the New York Giants in the 1941 NFL Championship Game, and the Packers won the 2011 meeting 21-14 en route to a Super Bowl XLV win over the Pittsburgh Steelers. The teams' first meeting was a victory for the Bears (known as the Staleys at the time) in 1921 in a shutout 20-0. The Packers claimed their first win over the Bears in 1925 14-10. The 1924 matchup (which ended in a 3-0 win for Chicago) was notable for featuring the first ever ejection of players in a game in NFL history, as Frank Hanny of the Bears and Walter Voss of the Packers were ejected for punching each other. The rivalry also featured one of the last successful fair catch kicks in 1968, when Bears kicker Mac Percival kicked the game-winning field goal.