Mike Ditka in a familiar pose.

The winds blow cold off of Lake Michigan in Chicago this time of year. Snow swirls around lamposts and street signs in ever widening eddies making little white vortexes as the city’s inhabitants, inured to the arctic cold, hustle along the broad avenues to their appointed tasks.

Grant Park is almost deserted these last few days as the temperature has dipped into the low twenties. On balmier winter days, you can usually find a couple of pick up touch football games to watch, the kids trying to imitate their gridiron heroes who cavort at Soldiers Field just a short distance away and who are usually done playing by this time every year.

Not so this year. For the first time since 1988, My Beloveds are going to play for a chance to go to the Super Bowl. The city is beside itself. Productivity has plummeted. Absenteeism has skyrocketed. Anything and everything with a Bear on it has been grabbed off the store shelves and displayed on cars, in the workplace, on front lawns and from apartment balconies.

Alternating psychotically between bouts of uncontainable excitement at the prospect of going to Miami for the Big Game and the cold, palpable fear of a devastating loss, Bears fans are in need of one gigantic Xanax or there is a danger that the mental health infrastructure of the city could collapse in a massive Chicagoland nervous breakdown.

And into this charged up atmosphere comes a betrayal so shocking, so shattering that some of the callers to the sports talk radio shows have actually wept in anger and sorrow.

Mike Ditka doesn’t care who wins the game this Sunday between the Bears and Saints:

It has been nearly 21 years since Mike Ditka led the Bears to the Super Bowl, and 14 years since he last walked the sidelines as their coach.

Yet on the eve of the Bears’ biggest game since 1989, “Da Coach” has his unique grip on this town again.

Many Bears’ fans were in an uproar over Ditka’s comments that he doesn’t have a rooting interest in the NFC championship game Sunday between the Bears and New Orleans Saints at Soldier Field.

He has ties to both teams, spending three forgettable years (a 15-33 record from 1997-99) as coach of the Saints. But it was in Chicago where Ditka became an icon; first as a Hall of Fame tight end and then as a larger-than-life coach who guided a larger-than-life team to glory in 1985.

The latest flap began Tuesday when Ditka told the Tribune, “I never root for anybody, really.”

Allow me to take you back in time to the year 1985 when the “Super Bowl Shuffle” Bears were not just beloved of the fans – any Bears team can make that claim. The relationship between the fans and the 1985 Bears was a sociological phenomena. I would venture to say that there has never been anything like it in the history of professional sports in America. The entire city, both football and non football fans, took that team and literally adopted it. The people adopted their swagger, their braggadocio, their kookiness. I daresay for a couple of months, the people of Chicago must have been insufferable louts.

And at the top of the crazy collection of characters who made up the team was Da Coach. Ditka with the jutting chin, the chest thrust forward in unspoken challenge to any and all who would question his team’s abilities or greatness. Ditka with the pugnacious prowling of the sidelines during games, smoldering like a volcano about to erupt and then exploding in anger or joy depending on the play of his charges. Ditka in the ref’s face. Ditka snarling at the opposing coach. Ditka and his assistant coach Buddy Ryan almost coming to blows during a game.

If there was ever a personality who evoked such powerful feelings of civic identity I am unaware of one. The triad formed by the coming together of Ditka, the city of Chicago, and the fans and residents was unprecedented and has endured despite Ditka’s desertion of the city for warmer climes. He is far more popular today than Michael Jordan whose luster was tarnished after leaving the Bulls by bad mouthing the team and then playing for the Washington Wizards for a couple of years.

So when Ditka came out and said that he wouldn’t root for the Bears, the town temporarily forgot about the game and buried its collective head in its hands:

Ditka’s comments caused a furor, as angry fans ripped the former coach for not being loyal to the team. It was as if they felt abandoned by someone many consider to be the ultimate Bear.

“Everyone understands he has an argument with the McCaskeys; he can’t get past that,” North said. “But they don’t understand how he can’t pull for the blue and orange. Those colors transcend anyone who runs the team. I mean, can you imagine Bill Walsh not rooting for the 49ers?”

The passion that Ditka still elicits speaks to his incredible popularity. His in-your-face approach to football, as well as life, resonated with a town that prides itself on being tough. His colorful and unpredictable persona never dimmed with Bears fans. He remains very much in their consciousness with his analyst work locally and nationally for ESPN.

“If Mike Ditka is on one side of Ontario Avenue and [Bears coach] Lovie Smith was on the other side the day after the Super Bowl, Mike would be mobbed,” North said. “He’s still the face of the franchise.”

Never mind that Ditka probably feels constrained by his position as analyst for ESPN not to take sides. Nevertheless, radio host Mike North of WSCR pointed out the obvious:

North was surprised Ditka didn’t stick by the Bears.

‘’It surprised me a whole lot,’’ North said. ‘’Usually, he shoots from the hip. He said he doesn’t make any predictions, but he predicted the Indy game [against New England]. Bears fans are his bread and butter. He can disassociate himself with the McCaskeys. We don’t care. He has an ax to grind with the McCaskeys, and probably for a good reason. But that has nothing to do with this game.

‘’Mike Ditka not picking the Bears is like Bear Bryant not picking the Crimson Tide.’’

It’s hard to tell about Ditka sometimes. Toward the end of his run as coach of the Bears, he became a caricature of himself, emphasizing the snarling cynic rather than a sort of lovable grouch whose droll sense of humor made most of the media look forward to his post game press conferences. His over the top rants the last couple of years as coach proved grating to both players and management, although most fans never wavered in supporting him.

His neutrality may also have something to do with the way he exited the team:

Mike Ditka didn’t back down Wednesday from a shot he took at Michael McCaskey, again referring to the Bears chairman as a ‘’snake.’’

Ditka first made the accusation during an interview with the Sun-Times’ Rick Telander for a column printed Wednesday. Ditka, fired as Bears coach after the 1992 season, elaborated during an interview with ESPN Radio’s Sean Salisbury and Steve Rosenbloom on WMVP-AM (1000).

‘’I dealt with a snake in Chicago,’’ Ditka said. ‘’I don’t really respect people who do those things. When I still had the job as the head coach, they talked to somebody behind my back. That’s a little disgusting. He talked to the guy he hired [Dave Wannstedt] before he fired me.

‘’You just heard it, and you just read it. You can book it.’’

McCaskey is the son of Virginia McCaskey (nee Halas) who is still majority owner of the Bears. A classless twit, I wouldn’t put it past the younger McCaskey to have done something so underhanded although there’s no confirmation that indeed the Bears talked to anyone prior to firing Ditka.

Regardless of the past, there is real anger directed at him for the first time in memory. And if the Bears make it past the Saints, the story may get even bigger. This is one of those stories that will be driven by talk radio and bleed over into local news coverage not just sports. And judging by the messages left at Ditka’s website for his restaurant, he may want to keep a low profile while he’s in town for the game:

“My code-word for success is “ACE”: Attitude, Character, and Enthusiasm.” Well, Mikey, Your ATTITUDE stinks, you have no CHARACTER, and your ENTHUSIASM towards the Bears is pathetic. You can’t have it both ways, FELLA

That “code word for success” is from one of Ditka’s best selling motivational books. He’s made a good living on the rubber chicken circuit, speaking at conventions and corporate gatherings about teamwork and improving yourself.

Is he in danger of losing all of this? No, but I believe that people in Chicago are looking a little bit differently at Ditka today than they were yesterday. And if the story continues into next week – and if Ditka can’t keep his mouth shut – he may do further damage to one of the most unique partnerships around. Ditka and the people of Chicago have come a long way together. It would be a shame if they parted company now.

UPDATE: 1/19

Ditka spent yesterday afternoon backtracking furiously from his statements of neutrality, giving several different explanations why he didn’t come out immediately in favor of the blue and burnt orange:

‘’I’m pulling and I’m rooting—as I always have every game this year—[for] the Chicago Bears,’’ Ditka said Thursday on WMVP-AM (1000) from his restaurant. ‘’Now, I thought I’d make that announcement on my show, not somebody else’s show.’’

‘’Does anybody ever think the reason I didn’t want to say anything in the first place … maybe, maybe I didn’t want to jinx them?’’ he told Steve Rosenbloom and Sean Salisbury. ‘’Did anybody think that possibility?’‘

Frankly, that’s a load of manure. Ditka said on three different occassions and in three seperate interviews that he had no rooting interest in the game. It wasn’t until the firestorm broke that he suddenly became worried about “jinxing” the team.

Ditka, who coached (and was fired by) both the Bears and the Saints, said he would like nothing more than for the Bears to make it to Miami and win the Super Bowl. He dismissed any notion he would be jealous if coach Lovie Smith won the title.

‘’No, I’m not jealous about anything. I want the Bears to win. I’ve been a Bear fan since 1961 when I started. And I’ve always been a Bear fan. ... If you’re asking me, the truth is that. And that’s how it is. People can assume anything they want to. I can’t control that. It becomes kind of humorous, really.’‘

What’s humorous is to watch as “shoot from the hip” Ditka spins, and spins, and spins his way out of trouble with his meal ticket – Bears fans.

Maybe he should re-read one of his motivational books, concentrating on the chapter admonishing readers to be honest with themselves.