Mike Ditka

Early life

Ditka was born Michael Dyczko, on October 18, 1939, in Carnegie, Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh, the oldest child of Charlotte (Keller) and Mike Ditka Sr. He grew up in nearby Aliquippa with siblings Ashton, David, and Mary Ann. His father, a welder, was one of three brothers of a Polish and Ukrainian family in the coal-mining and steel-manufacturing area in Western Pennsylvania. His ancestry on his mother's side is Irish and German. Others in his hometown found it hard to pronounce the name Dyczko, so the family name was changed to "Ditka". Ditka attended St. Titus School.

Ditka attended Aliquippa High School, where he was a three-sport star under head coach Press Maravich. While at Aliquippa High School, the team doctor, John L. Miller, took Mike and other players to Pitt football games and encouraged them to play for Pitt. Ditka is quoted as saying, "Doc Miller patched me up many times". Ditka hoped to escape his hometown's manufacturing jobs by attending college with a football scholarship. Initially planning to become a dentist, he was recruited by three NCAA Division I teams: Notre Dame, Penn State, and Pitt.

College career

Ditka played college football for Pitt from 1958 until 1960, and was a three-sport athlete, also playing baseball (outfielder) and basketball (forward) for the Pitt Panthers. He also was an intramural wrestling champion at Pitt, and a member of Sigma Chi fraternity.

He started on the football team all three seasons, leading the team in receiving in each, while also serving as a linebacker, defensive end, and punter. As a sophomore, he led the team with 18 receptions for 252 yards and averaged 42.5 yards per punt. He had one touchdown reception (tied for second on the team).

As a junior, he led the team with 16 receptions for 249 yards and four receiving touchdowns. He also averaged 38.3 yards per punt.

As a senior, he was named a team captain, while leading the team with 11 receptions for 229 yards and two receiving touchdowns. He was a unanimous first-team selection on the College Football All-America Team as a two-way end. He finished his college career with 45 catches for 730 yards and seven touchdowns.

In 1986, Ditka was enshrined into the College Football Hall of Fame. In 1997, his 89 jersey number was retired by the University of Pittsburgh at halftime of the game against the University of Miami. In 2018, he was inducted into the inaugural 16-member class of the University of Pittsburgh Athletics Hall of Fame.

Playing career

Chicago Bears

Ditka was selected by the Chicago Bears fifth overall in the 1961 NFL draft, while the Houston Oilers drafted him eighth overall in the first round of the 1961 AFL draft. He signed with the Bears and his presence was immediately felt. In his first season, Ditka had 58 receptions, introducing a new dimension to a tight end position that had previously been dedicated to blocking. He also scored 12 receiving touchdowns, which was the most by a Bears rookie. His success earned him Rookie of the Year honors. He continued to play for the Bears for the next five years, earning a Pro Bowl trip each season.

He played on the 1963 NFL championship team. Many of the players from that team, including Ditka, were drafted by assistant coach George Allen, a future Hall of Famer, who was then in charge of the Bears' drafts. During the season, against the Los Angeles Rams, Ditka tied Harlon Hill's franchise record for the most receiving touchdowns in a game with four. Ditka ranks first among tight ends and fourth in Bears history with 4,503 yards, fifth in both receptions (316) and touchdown catches (34).

In 1962, he started all 14 games, making 58 receptions (tied for the team lead) for 904 yards (led the team) and five receiving touchdowns (led the team). In 1963, he led the team with 59 catches for 794 yards and eight touchdowns.

In 1964, he was second on the team with 75 receptions for 897 yards and five touchdowns. The next year, he posted 36 receptions (second on the team), 454 receiving yards (third on the team), and two receiving touchdowns (tied for fourth on the team).

In 1966, he registered 32 receptions (second on the team), 378 yards (third on the team) and two touchdowns (tied for second on the team). Ditka was also noted for decking football fan Felix Carbajal, who had run onto the playing field late in a week 2 31–17 loss to the Rams at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum on September 16. He had played out his option that season after not being able to reach a contract agreement with Bears' owner/head coach George Halas.

On February 8, 1967, The New York Times reported that just before the AFL–NFL merger, Ditka had signed a $300,000 contract with a $50,000 signing bonus with the Houston Oilers, the team that owned his AFL draft rights.

Philadelphia Eagles

On April 26, 1967, Ditka was traded to the Philadelphia Eagles along with a 1968 fourth-round pick (#106-Alan Bush) in exchange for quarterback Jack Concannon. The transaction was intended to fill roster vacancies created by the retirements of Eagles' tight end Pete Retzlaff and Bears' quarterback Rudy Bukich. His Oilers contract was transferred to the Eagles and Ditka was able to keep his $50,000 bonus to avoid any legal conflicts. His time as a Bears player bitterly came to an end with a parting shot in which he stated that Halas "threw nickels around like manhole covers." He wore number 98 in his first season with the Eagles, while only playing in nine games with four starts because of injuries. Ditka was outplayed by tight end Jim Kelly, registering 26 receptions for 274 yards and two touchdowns.

In 1968, he changed his jersey number back to his usual 89. He appeared in 11 games with six starts, and his statistics were below tight end Fred Hill. He posted 13 receptions for 111 yards and two touchdowns.

Dallas Cowboys

On January 28, 1969, he was traded to the Dallas Cowboys in exchange for wide receiver Dave McDaniels. Pettis Norman ended up being named the starting tight end, but Ditka was still able to play in 12 games with four starts, while making 17 receptions for 268 yards and three touchdowns.

In 1970, he remained a reserve player behind Norman. He appeared in 14 games, while tallying eight receptions for 98 yards and no touchdowns. The Cowboys reached their first Super Bowl, losing 13–16 against the Baltimore Colts, by way of a field goal scored with five seconds left in regulation time.

In 1971, he was a backup player behind Billy Truax, appearing in 14 games with four starts. He set the franchise record for tight ends with 30 receptions in a season, while also compiling 360 receiving yards, one touchdown, and three kickoff returns for 30 yards. His highlight was a touchdown reception in the Cowboys' 24–3 victory over the Miami Dolphins in Super Bowl VI.

In 1972, he was named the starter at tight end, after Truax was limited by off-season knee surgery. He started all 14 games, posting 17 receptions for 198 yards and one touchdown, while alternating in some passing situations with rookie Jean Fugett.

On March 1, 1973, Ditka announced his retirement as a player, opening the door for him to be named the Cowboys wide receiver assistant coach under head coach Tom Landry. At the time, his 427 receptions were the most by a tight end in NFL history.

Hall of Fame

In 1988, his blocking and 427 career receptions for 5,812 yards and 43 touchdowns earned him the honor of being the first tight end inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Ditka also scored two touchdowns on offensive fumble recoveries, tying seven other players for the most in NFL history. In 1999, he was ranked number 90 on The Sporting News's list of the 100 Greatest Football Players.

NFL career statistics

Coaching career

Retiring after the 1972 season, Ditka was immediately hired as an assistant coach by Landry. Ditka spent nine seasons as an assistant coach with the Cowboys. During his tenure, the Cowboys made the playoffs eight times, won six division titles, three NFC championships, and a Super Bowl victory in 1977.

While working with the Cowboys, Ditka sent a letter to George Halas, his former head coach, who was still the owner of the Bears. In the letter, Ditka expressed regret for the acrimonious manner in which his time with the Bears had come to an end and said that he would like to come back to Chicago and be the head coach of the Bears "when he was ready". Meanwhile, the Cowboys continued to win games, although they did not win another Super Bowl while Ditka was there. His last game with the Cowboys was the 1981 NFC Championship Game, where the team fell to the San Francisco 49ers.

Chicago Bears

After firing previous coach Neill Armstrong following the 1981 season, Halas decided to take Ditka up on his offer from several years earlier, and hired him to become the team's head coach for the 1982 season. Although the Bears had made the playoffs under Armstrong and his predecessor Jack Pardee, those were the only two winning seasons since Halas' retirement as coach, so he was looking for a coach who would bring the Bears back to prominence. Shortly after his hiring, as recounted by Mike Singletary in 2006, Ditka called a team meeting. In the meeting, he warned that the team would experience some turnover, but if they were all willing to work hard for him and stand with him, Ditka promised a trip to the Super Bowl within three seasons. Specifically, Ditka said, "Give me three years, and if you walk with me, we'll get to the dance."

By his third season in 1984, Ditka led the Bears to the NFC Championship Game, where the Bears were shut out by the eventual Super Bowl champion San Francisco 49ers in San Francisco. The following year in 1985, Ditka's coaching career hit its pinnacle on January 26, 1986, with a 46–10 win over the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XX at the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans. Ditka has stated that one of his biggest regrets in life was not letting Walter Payton score a touchdown in the Super Bowl, instead opting for Jim McMahon to run it in twice and rookie defensive tackle William "The Refrigerator" Perry to run it in once. Nevertheless, Ditka has contended that his reluctance to give Payton the ball was justified on account of the disproportionately heavy coverage the Bears' star running back faced from the Patriots' defense, and insisted that Payton's mere presence on the field was a decisive factor in the Bears' crushing victory notwithstanding personal statistics.

In 1985, Ditka led the Bears to a 15–1 record, and he was named NFL Coach of the Year by the Associated Press following the regular season. Football commentators widely regard the 1985 Bears defense as one of the best. The 1985 Bears defense was masterminded by defensive coordinator Buddy Ryan, with little oversight from Ditka; in fact, Ditka and Ryan had a largely adversarial relationship dating back to Ditka's hiring as Ryan, who was already on the coaching staff when Ditka joined the Bears, felt that he should have been promoted into the head-coaching position. Although the two men continued to work together, the relationship continued to deteriorate. With the Bears trailing by three touchdowns in a late-season Monday night game against the Miami Dolphins, the team's only loss, Ryan finally snapped after Ditka, as he recounted in 2006 for NFL Network, told him that the defensive scheme was not working. The two began throwing punches at each other and had to be separated. Ditka said, at that point, the relationship became unsalvageable. In an unusual gesture, following the Bears' Super Bowl victory, the players carried both Ryan and Ditka off the field. In addition, the 1985 Chicago Bears are one of several teams to consistently challenge the undefeated 1972 Miami Dolphins for the unofficial title of the "Greatest NFL Team of All-Time". The NFL Network series America's Game rated the 1985 Bears as the second-best Super Bowl champion, only behind the 1972 Miami Dolphins.

New Orleans Saints

In 1997, after a four-year absence in which he had served as a television analyst, Ditka returned to the NFL to take over as the permanent replacement for Jim Mora with the New Orleans Saints. Ditka inherited a team that had not made the playoffs, nor had recorded a record above .500, since 1992, and had finished the 1996 season, during which Mora had resigned, tied with the Atlanta Falcons for the second-worst record in the league (only the New York Jets, who only won once, had a worse record).

In Ditka's first season back in the league in 1997, he struggled early, as the Saints lost four of their first five games. They did manage to beat his former team, the Chicago Bears, along the way, and recorded five more wins, but after winning only one game in the division (even being swept by the last-place St. Louis Rams), the Saints finished at 6–10.

Ditka's team played more inconsistently in 1998, as the Saints started out 3–0, but could not keep the momentum going. Still, they were in playoff contention toward the end of the season, and defeated the eventual NFC East champions in Ditka's other former squad, the Dallas Cowboys, to get to 6–7 with three games to go. They dropped their last three, though, and were eliminated in week 16 on a last-second field goal against the Arizona Cardinals.

Then, in the offseason that followed, Ditka was roundly criticized for the trading of all of the team's 1999 draft picks (plus their first-round draft pick in 2000) to the Washington Redskins to move up in the draft and select Texas running back Ricky Williams (Washington later used the picks to select future All-Pro and Hall of Famer Champ Bailey, Jon Jansen, and LaVar Arrington). The trade was further mocked because of a magazine cover in which Ditka posed with Williams, who was wearing a wedding dress.

The 1999 season proved to be the worst of Ditka's coaching career. After winning the season opener against the Carolina Panthers, the Saints dropped their next seven games, including a loss to the reactivated Cleveland Browns on a hail mary as time expired. This was the Browns first win after their reactivation. As the season wore on, Ditka's frustrations began showing in the local media. After a late-season practice with the team sitting at 2–7, a grumpy Ditka gave a sixty-second press conference where he was very short tempered and dismissive of what he thought were stupid questions. When one of them made it a point to ask him why he was in such a bad mood, Ditka responded by saying "what do you care?", and then followed up by saying to the reporter "if you were 2-7, you'd be in a bad mood too." Ditka would take one more question before muttering to the reporters, "not very much fun, is it?", then going inside.

Broadcasting career

Almost immediately after his dismissal from the Bears in 1993, Ditka took a broadcasting job with NBC, working as an analyst on NFL Live and as a color commentator for many other NBC broadcasts. After he was fired by the Saints, Ditka joined CBS Sports, spending the 2000 and 2001 seasons as a studio analyst on The NFL Today. He is currently a commentator on ESPN's NFL Live, ESPN's Sunday NFL Countdown, and CBS Radio–Westwood One's Monday Night Football pregame show. On his radio show, Coach Ditka is called "America's Coach" by well-known sidekick Jim Gray. Beginning in 2006, Ditka appeared on a Seattle radio program, "Groz with Gas" on 950 KJR-AM Seattle, on Thursday afternoons with Dave Grosby and Mike Gastineau. Ditka regularly appears on Chicago radio station ESPN 1000 (WMVP-AM), often broadcasting on Thursday mornings from one of his eponymous restaurants along with ESPN 1000 mid-morning hosts Marc Silverman and Tom Waddle, a former Bears player under Ditka.

Ditka served as color commentator for ESPN's September 10, 2007, broadcast of Monday Night Football, alongside Mike Greenberg and Mike Golic. He replicated this role on the second game of the doubleheader in 2008, as well. Ditka spent several years with ESPN working on Sunday NFL Countdown. In March 2016, ESPN and Ditka announced he would move to SportsCenter for remote-broadcasting analysis, as Ditka disliked the long distance from his home to the studio. This new role allows him to stay at home, while still maintaining an analyst role with the network.

Other ventures

Ditka has written or contributed to a number of books since 1986. He wrote Ditka: An Autobiography with friend and sports journalist Don Pierson; he authored The 85 Bears: We Were the Greatest with Rick Telander. He also wrote with Telander In Life First you Kick Ass: Reflections on the 1985 Bears and Wisdom from Da Coach.

Ditka has also been the subject of several books including Ditka: Monster of the Midway by Armen Keteyian and Ditka: The Player, the Coach, the Chicago Bears Legend which is a compilation of Chicago Tribune stories written about Ditka throughout the years. He is also a large topic in books written about the Bears as a team such as Then Ditka said to Payton and Monsters: The 1985 Chicago Bears and the Wild Heart of Football.

In 1987, following the success of the Chicago Bears' charity single "The Super Bowl Shuffle", the video's producer Richard E. Meyer created a similar music video starring Ditka, titled "The Grabowski Shuffle." The video, about "working hard to get what you want", was inspired by a comment Ditka had made about his team's reputation: "There are Smiths and there are Grabowskis; we're the Grabowskis."

In 1991, Ditka cooperated with Accolade to produce the computer game Mike Ditka Ultimate Football and the Sega Mega Drive game Mike Ditka Power Football. In 1995, Ditka starred as a football coach in a full-motion video game called Quarterback Attack with Mike Ditka, released for the Sega Saturn, PC, and 3DO. Quarterback Attack was re-released for iTunes and Google Play in December 2016.

In 1993, Ditka appeared as himself in the 271st and final episode of the American television sitcom Cheers. Ditka also appeared as himself in the show According to Jim, in the 2002 episode "Cars & Chicks". Ditka has made guest appearances and cameos on several other shows, including L.A. Law, Saturday Night Live, and 3rd Rock from the Sun. In 2005, Ditka had a major role in the comedy Kicking & Screaming, playing himself; he was recruited by Will Ferrell's character to be an assistant little league soccer coach.

Ditka appeared in several ads for Montgomery Ward in the early 1990s, promoting their electronics and appliances department, known as Electric Avenue. Ditka also starred in ad for 'Big Shot' soda in 1997.

Personal life

Ditka was married to his first wife, Marge, from 1961 to 1973. They had four children together: Mark, Matt, Mike, and Megan. He married his current wife Diane (née Trantham) Ditka in 1977.

During the 1985 season, he was arrested on Interstate 294 near O'Hare International Airport and later convicted of DUI after returning from a game against the San Francisco 49ers.

In the midst of a successful 1988 season, he suffered a heart attack, but bounced back quickly. In November 2012, he suffered a minor stroke at a suburban country club in Chicago. Later in the day, Ditka reported he was feeling "good right now and it's not a big deal."

From 1989 until 1997, Ditka lived in Bannockburn, Illinois.

From 1997 until 2001, Ditka lived in an area of New Orleans known as English Turn.

He is a practicing Roman Catholic and a member of the Knights of Columbus.

On November 23, 2018, Ditka was hospitalized in Naples, Florida, after suffering a heart attack while playing golf.

Political views

Ditka is known for his vocal conservative views. In July 2004, Ditka, a self-described "ultra-ultra-ultra conservative", was reportedly considering running against the Democratic candidate, state senator Barack Obama, for an open seat in the U.S. Senate for Illinois in the 2004 Senate election. The seat was being vacated by the retiring Peter Fitzgerald, a Republican, and Republican nominee Jack Ryan withdrew from the race amid controversy at the end of June, leaving the Republicans in a bind. Local and national political leaders, from Illinois Republican Party Chair Judy Baar Topinka to National Republican Senatorial Committee Chair George Allen, whose father by the same name was an assistant coach with the Bears in the 1960s when Ditka played, met with Ditka in an effort to persuade him to fill the spot on the ticket. On July 14, however, Ditka announced he would not seek the nomination, citing personal and business considerations. His wife was against the run and he operates a chain of restaurants. Obama went on to defeat the eventual Republican candidate, former U.S. ambassador Alan Keyes, in a landslide in the November 2004 election. Ditka has since regretted not running. He also believes that Obama never would have been elected president if he had run against Obama for Senate in 2004, and claims that Obama is the worst president in United States history.

In stark contrast to the above-stated positions, Ditka appeared in an ad during the 2010 Illinois gubernatorial election for incumbent Democratic governor Pat Quinn. In the ad, Ditka stated that, "[D]oing the right thing for the people who put you in office is more important than what you can do for yourself in office ... and I think he'll do that. I think he understands that ... and I think he's good people." Quinn, at the time, was locked into a tight race against State Senator Bill Brady, a conservative Republican from Bloomington. Quinn would go on to narrowly defeat Brady. Four years later, in 2014, Ditka appeared in a televised campaign ad for Quinn's Republican challenger, Bruce Rauner, who defeated Quinn in the general election.

In October 2011, Ditka and the 1985 team went to the White House after they did not attend in 1986 due to the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. He presented President Obama with a Chicago Bears jersey with the number 85 on it with "Obama" on the back of it.

Ditka was a vocal supporter of Donald Trump's election campaign, saying "I support Trump all the way. I really do."