When did you become a Bears fan?

I’ll have you know 2 people in family share the name of Les. and we’re all Bears fans.

i was born in the early 80’s so I wasn’t very old for the Superbowl, but i remember the game(barely) and the family’s jubilation. I was a loose fan in childhood, but in high school… I was way more into it, and ever since i could afford internet, it’s been 24/7 Bears.

The man in the picture was a huge part of my decision.

I was young and my dad was a Cleveland Browns diehard. When I started following football, I was immediately drawn to the “buck the system” rebel that is Jim McMahon.

As a youth playing pee-wee and backyard football, I remember wearing the infamous headband, yea I was cool in the day, laugh now.

As I started paying more attention, Walter Payton was just awesome, period. I remember his saying something about refusing to run out of bounds because he was going to punish someone for trying to tackle him.

Then I heard the defense philosophy, don’t tackle the guy, hold him up and let the next 3 guys hit him too.

Add in Dent, McMichael, Singletary, Gault and a Superbowl shuffle and that sealed the deal, I have been a fan ever since.

I was 6. I was watching an epic Bears Packers game at Sears of all places. I watched the entire 2nd half – IN COLOR. The Bears lost.

I loved their grit and determination. They kept playing hard the entire, miserable game. Hooked at age six.

Now you guys can understand my moniker.

in Evanston in the early 70’s. After the doctor smacked me, my father brought in the Branding Irons, and forever marked the bottom of one of my feet with a large stylish “C” and the other with a small and sad “G” with a line crossing it out. The rest was history……….

on the radio in our kitchen with my Dad and uncles because it was played at Wrigley Field and the blackout rule was still in effect so we couldn’t watch it on TV. I really became a huge fan when Butkus and Sayers were drafted in 1965. That was also the year that Joe Namath blew off the NFL for the AFL which gave that league credibility. The fighting between the two leagues became a real part of the pro football landscape at that point and made it more of an event to the general public. It was, in my opinion, the reason that an NFL-AFL championship game came to be. It’s also ironic that the first of these championships to be known as the Super Bowl was the one in which the same Joe Namath pulled off the greatest upset in history when his NY Jets beat the Balitmore Colts.

When I was 5 or 6. My dad was born in Chicago [his parents moved to Arizona when he was a kid, and we all still live here] and he got me watching some of the games and I liked them.

and the first game that i was told me and my mom watch the was the Viking game(the comeback) since then Bears 4 life.

pissed that the 63 Championship game against the Giants was blacked out in the Chicago area. OK so I’m an old fart.

I was at my Uncle’s house and a game was on TV. I can’t remember who they were playing or even if they won or not. I just remember watching a guy in a #34 jersey running through the opposition. I remember feeling like I was watching the greatest athlete ever perform that day. I was in awe. I’ve been a fan ever since.

Matt Forte’s rookie year. I had started dating GallopingGhost about a year earlier and had used football as “naptime.” But I realized how important it was to him, so I started trying to learn about the game and the Bears, and fell in love. It was nice to be able to share the ups and downs with GG, and know what he and his friends were talking about when the game was on (and understand why I was being woken up by “AHHH!!!” or “YEEEEESSS!!!!”) Then, when I had decided to watch a whole season (without falling asleep) I was watching the Colts and Bears at my cousin’s (a Colts fan) house. Matt Forte lit it up and it was so easy to get sucked in to the excitement. I was then hooked. (It also explains why Matt is my favorite!)

Since then, I’ve joined WCG (so that I could learn more about football, etc.) and GG and I have gone to a game and training camp! That’s my story in a nutshell. I wish I could say that I’ve been a fan my whole life, but I can’t. But I still don’t think that means I’m any less of a fan. :]

I didn’t understand what was going on in the game. But I guess I still considered myself a Bears “fan”, since they’re Chicago’s team. The only thing I remember from the 1985 Superbowl is having a recording (record or cassette, I can’t remember) of the Superbowl Shuffle and playing it a lot. I think just in the past five or six years I’ve gotten into football and become a true fan.

I love arena football, too. Chicago Rush, wooooooo!

I started liking the Bears when they won the superbowl in 1985, I was 5 years old! i think the Superbowl Shuffle may have had something to do with it! Every since, I have had to feild the question……Cowboys or Redskins…..my answer….neither I love my Bears! Next question….how are you a Bears fan? See above! lol

yes i am from england but i have tried to follow the beloved bears since the 60ies. i heard about this athlete who had a career game against the 49ers on a sports show here in england.i was hooked and i plagued my uncle who was a merchant seaman d at the time and was always going to ny,to bring back articles and magazines about american football. i read about gale sayers and dick butkus,i was hooked.i have come across the pond and took in a number of bears games since and i am still hooked

I had grown up watching Bears games but never really got all the way into it until the magical ‘01 49ers game. I remember watching that and the Browns game the next week and couldn’t believe Mike Brown ended it for us the same way two weeks in a row. That’s when I was hooked. My Dad watched the Bears but wasn’t a hardcore fan and my brother caught on with the Packers craze of the late ‘90s (and my grandma is a Pack fan) In 2004 I started watching all the games with my buddies and in 2008 I started watching with HB. It’s been an awesome ride and even though the last decade wasn’t the best for us, the future is bright.

I was born in Chicago and have been a Bears fan as long as I can remember. I wore number 46 in 7th grade football as I was a safety and punt returner. I think that was Doug Plank’s rookie season and the coaches told me I was the biggest fastest kid on the lightweight team so I had to hit really hard. I hurt my knee returning a punt and ended up watching the Bears the rest of the year and have not stopped being a Bears fan since.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JphefLxVzog

My Grandpa and Dad owned a photo developing business in Chicago (either that or a suburb) back in the 70’s and 80’s, they developed team photos for a lot of Chicago teams including the Bears, and he was a hardcore Bears fan, so naturally when I was born I was a Bears fan first and foremost. I liked Denver for a bit just because I was young and they won, but that love is replaced by disdain now. Dad and I would watch the games every Sunday no matter how bad, and I grew up in the 90’s so it was bad…

I followed NFL football mildly. But i was more concered about the video games.
I had madden 95 for the sega genesis (i was 5) and i played that game nonstop. Whenever i played in a peewee game i always wanted to be barry sanders, because he was the best in the madden game!

Around 98 i started following football hardcore (i was 8) i became a bandwagon Broncos fan and always wanted to be TD.

Finally around 2000 when the Bears drafted Urlacher i became a diehard Bears fan at the age of 10. My favorite team was the 2001 playoff team with Traylor and Washington, Urlacher, Jim Miller, James Allen, Marty Booker in his first stint, Big Cat Williams, Man that team could have been dangerous with better coaches.

And it’s good to hear from some of our less frequent commenters!

1986 in the UK and we had a weekly programme showing an edit of one game a week; I was just getting into my rugby at that time and this was something similar, big guys hitting one another hard. One team in particular stuck in my mind, possibly because they appeared in 2 or 3 games where they kept fighting to the end and won with last-ditch kicks at goal, but also possibly because they were so very smashmouth, which suited me down to the ground.

Later I was to discover this was the reigning Superbowl champions (though it would be another 2 years before I even heard of the superbowl), the kicker in the #6 jersey who had me jumping for joy was Kevin Butler, and I’d been privileged to see most of the legendary ‘85 Bears in action. I still irrationally loathe the Redskins for knocking the Bears out of the playoffs in Walter Payton’s final season.

and have been watching the Bears since about 69 or 70. That Xmas I got my first Bears Helmet and Jersey and used it to beat on my younger brother who happened to get that Xmas a ….Packer helmet and Jersey!! I think my Dad still feels sorry for him til this day that he let him go to the darkside..

I am the child of two native Chicagoans. Both parents and all four grandparents were lifelong Bears’ fans, so it never occurred to me to back any other team. I will admit to being a fan of the John Madden Raiders’ teams in the 70s, but the Bears were always the first priority. I am the same way with the Cubs and the A’s.

But as for hockey, I am all Sharks all the time. It was great to watch game 5 last Saturday.

smart member of his family and chose to be a Bears fan. So I am actually a 2nd generation Bears fan and I have already begun brainwashing er indoctrinating my son who is 19 months into all things Bears. I was 6 when the Bears won super bowl XX and I totally remember doing the shuffle as well as getting my McDonald’s football cards(you guys remember those?)

Started following them more closely as i got older and remember my dad and I checking our watches on Sunday after church let out so we didn’t miss kickoff. My Ditka obsession started probably the min I was able to form the phrase Ditka’s mustache. My fandom has grown over the year only to expand even more once I discoverd this website know as WCG back in 08. So now I’m checking the site at work, at home, on the phone and still wondering why it is that you still aren’t following WCG on Twitter.

Thing here has always been a soccer country and while i love football, i still love our good old soccer too. (people who call it a pansy sport, never played a match)
And like you guys probably can guess, i couldn’t be a lifelong fan.
But i can tell you when i first heard about the team and when i finally decided it was my team.

I was 1998 12. Cable TV was new around here, but the Sony channel has always transmitted Saturday Night live. I remember laughing my ass off at Chris Farley trying to ressucitate himself after some polish sausages.
I thought “who are these DA BEARS” ?
A few years later i’d know the answer.

Here in Brazil, i think that all superbowls were transmitted from the 80’s and beyond.
But i came across the Bears in 2001. The year of the rebirth.
The Bears, was the Team who won the Superbowl in the Year i was born. 1985 .
And that made me chose them. For or for worse.

After a lot of learning about the tradition and relevance of the team, i though.
I’m going to be a bears fan.
I don’t care if pittsburgh and dallas or Sanfran has a ton of superbowls.
The bears are the most traditional team in the sport’s history.
And i refuse myself to be a packer fan. (too much yellow and green over here already).

So that’s about it.
Now you know about the BRAZILIAN bears fans.

Bears fans are born wearing blue and orange. Hell, the first words out of my daughter’s mouth were “Ditka” and “Green Bay Sucks”…I’m not sure which was first.

the earliest memory I have is of wearing my eldest brother’s Payton jersey, dancing/singing the Shuffle in my grandparents’ living room.

I was hooked from then on. :-) When my brother grew out of the jersey it became mine. And its still the only jersey I’ve ever owned, I wore it until it nearly fell apart and then it got destroyed during a flood.

I was only four years old when da Bears were doing the Shuffle, so my model Bears growing up were Erik Kramer and Curtis Conway. Laugh if you will, but I think they led the league in scoring in ’94 or ’95. I figured I should probably pay attention to this team.

Unfortunately, what followed was some of the most brutal seasons in recent Bears history: the Wannstedt/Jauron years!! I will admit that during this dark age I flirted with the Cowboys bandwagon (it was the Aikman era -please don’t revoke my Bears card), but I never stopped cheering for the navy and orange. My steady fandom was rewarded with the 2005 and 2006 seasons and however many future Super Bowls await. BEAR DOWN!

in ‘72. I was told by my Mom that my first Bears game was at the age of 2, but of course can’t remember a thing. The things I can remember: the fog bowl, ‘85 NFC championship- fans barking like dogs during Marshall’s return for a TD, while snow starting to fall (Unfortunately, only two tickets for the SB were made available for season-ticket holders…damn parents!). ‘06 Championship game; great to see Bush eat his antics after his flip into the end-zone. I also met Revie Sorie, and got to get into the Bears locker room back in the late 70s. And that’s about it…

in the garage, game on the radio, handing tools to my Dad as he worked on the car. I remember asking him if he liked the Bears, he told me Halas had been a Navy man during the war and was a pretty good baseball player when he was young.

but as krazy as it sounds The Bears were my team once i heard and saw the Super Bowl Shuffle video lol A football team rappin b4 the Big game? Unheard of! Plus i remember quite a few people didnt like it and made me like it even more, then they went out and destroyed the Patriots and the rest is Bear fan history…They really should have done a Super Bowl shuffle in 06 but i have a feeling if/when we get to the big game wit Jay-C there will be a Super Bowl shuffle remix and i for 1 cant wait

I watched the Bears-Packers games because my dad grew up near GB and it was the only time he got to see them play for the most part. I thought it was so funny to watch him get so angry at the games, especially when the Bears won. We were living about 5 blocks from Walter Payton and I grew up knowing him as a neighbor and a football player; before he got famous and rich and moved to Lake Forest. Knowing what a genuinely decent guy Payton was and how hard he played made it easy to be a Bears fan.

I slapped Farve in the face and hugged Mike Ditkas leg.

Seriously, when I was 3 years old I use to watch the ball, go back and fourth every Sunday.At least that’s what my parents say….. By the age of 6 I wouldn’t miss a game…….

i am not unique, there are thousands like me who love the bears.GO BEARS. hope to come over and get a game in this season if god spares.

I was born in late 1973, in 1982 I remember being at a friends house for a birthday party, and his dad and uncles were watching the game, I sat and watched it with them, had about a million questions about the game of football, which they were more than happy to answer ( during commercials ), and I’ve been a fan ever since, I’ve met Da Coach at a Golfsmith, and I’ve even done the heating work on a few of the players houses

My Father grew up in New Hampshire as a New York Giants fan. At that time the New York Giants were the home team for everyone North-East of New York. I was born in Maine in 1983. When the Giants played the Chicago Bears in the 1985 playoffs I suppose I thought it would be funny to root against my Father’s team. I soon fell in love with with the Shuffle and Refrigerator Perry and the Headband and the rest of the gang. I was a fan into my teen years. However, somewhere along the way my interest in sports dwindled and I lost track of the Bears all together. It wasn’t until I got married and moved out of the house that I started missing the connection that I had with my Dad watching games (even if we were rooting for different teams). So about 5 years ago I started going back to my parent’s place on Sundays and watching games. All the emotions rushed back like I had never even missed a game. I fell in love all over again.