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I will say this about Ditka. He is never anything but laudatory about the Packers, not just Vince's generation whom he played against, but the current Thompson-McCarthy regime as well.  Would be easy for him, especially on ESPN, to play the fool and trash Green Bay owing to the rivalry (made more personal by the cheap shot BS pulled out by the Forrest Gregg teams against the B***s), but he never has.

Papa Bear would understand.

Halas helped save Packers

Respect β€” and animosity β€” define this storied rivalry

More than animosity, respect defines the NFL's oldest and best rivalry.

To grasp this fully, you have to go back to one day in 1956 when it wasn't Bears legend George Halas coaching against the Packers. It was Halas coaxing the people of Green Bay on behalf of the home team considered his nemesis.

With the Packers facing the threat of NFL relocation unless city residents approved a new football stadium, Halas boldly sought to keep his field enemies closer to Chicago. Everybody in Wisconsin knew Halas despised the Packers for two Sundays every football season.

But less publicized was the honorable way Halas treated the Packers organization the other 363 days of the year, best illustrated when the Bears founder showed up to push public funding for what is now Lambeau Field.

"While the NFL and other people were telling Green Bay what needed to be done, George Halas went up there and made an impassioned plea about how important the Packers were to the community," said incoming Bears Chairman George McCaskey.

At that rally in '56, heavily promoted on local radio, Halas preached to locals used to booing his Bears. When voters responded April 3, 1956, by passing the stadium referendum measure to issue bonds that greenlighted more pro football in Green Bay, Halas received a share of the credit...

... Documented and anecdotal history suggests, beneath the game-day edginess, Halas occasionally showed a soft spot for the Packers going back to the NFL's infancy. Read "Papa Bear," by author Jeff Davis, and it's clear Halas always recognized how both teams needed each other to grow their respective franchises β€” and the league.

As noted in the Packers media guide, it was Halas who was instrumental in persuading league partners in 1922 to allow Green Bay and Lambeau back in the fold after the Packers were banned for using college players illegally. Though it's interesting to note that it was Halas who originally discovered that the Packers used the players and the Bears signed one of them, Hunk Anderson, after the hubbub.

Still, a mutual respect developed, and the Packers returned the favor during the Great Depression when hard financial times left Halas scrounging for money to meet payroll expenses...

http://articles.chicagotribune...en-bay-press-gazette

It's the best, classiest rivalry in football. But Ditka wearing that G&G sweater would be like Lombardi wearing a Bears trenchcoat and ball cap. Legends should not sell themselves for marketing purposes. 

 

Ditka has always been complimentary of MM and TT and that's a show of respect, as it should be. However, lately as a commentator he shows less and less insight. 

I remember listening to the SCORE in Chicago maybe early 1996 or so just before Packers/Cowboys played in the NFC Championship.  I could swear that I remember both Doug Buffone and Ditka (who was on as a guest) said they were rooting for the Packers over the Cowboys.  It's been so long ago that I might not remember that correctly, but that's how I remember it. 

 

I think Ditka said during that segment that he thought the Packers were doing things the right way, and I got the feeling he felt the Cowboys were a bunch of guys he didn't think very highly of.  That surprised me since Ditka had won a Super Bowl as a member of the Cowboys even though he probably mostly identified himself as an ex-Chicago Bear.  So maybe even 20 years ago, Ditka's feelings for the Packers had thawed after he truly hated them during the Gregg years.

I read somewhere a while back that in the earlier days (1930s and 40's) both teams, at different times, were facing bankruptcy.  At one point Curly Lambeau lent George Halas money to keep the Bears going, and at another point Halas did the same thing for Curly.  I don't remember who was first, or how much money was involved, but both knew how important each team was to the other, pretty much from the beginning.  I'm going to look around a bit and see if I can find the story, and if I can, I'll update this.

 

EDIT:  Here's part of a story that was first printed in the Chicago Tribune in 2011:

 

"As noted in the Packers media guide, it was Halas who was instrumental in persuading league partners in 1922 to allow Green Bay and Lambeau back in the fold after the Packers were banned for using college players illegally. Though it's interesting to note that it was Halas who originally discovered that the Packers used the players and the Bears signed one of them, Hunk Anderson, after the hubbub.

Still, a mutual respect developed, and the Packers returned the favor during the Great Depression when hard financial times left Halas scrounging for money to meet payroll expenses.

"He had to borrow money from his mother and his mother-in-law, and to me it speaks to his vision that he was able to keep things going," McCaskey said.

Halas also accepted a $1,500 loan from the Packers in 1932, according to Green Bay Press-Gazette archives. Some football historians believe it was that gesture by the Packers that drove Halas to get so involved in 1956 when the NFL deemed old City Stadium and its 24,000-seat capacity too small.

But perhaps Halas' biggest contribution to his football neighbor 185 miles to the north went beyond supporting stadium projects that kept afloat teams in small markets such as Green Bay. When the Packers needed to hire a coach at the end of the 1958 season, team President Dominic Olejniczak sought Halas' opinion.

"Vince Lombardi's your man,'' Halas told Olejniczak.

Indeed he was. No wonder when Halas died in 1983, Olejniczak was quoted in newspapers as saying, "The Packers could not have had a better friend than George Halas."

Last edited by StarrToDowler

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