KEY POINTS:
Go the Chicago Bears.
The glitziest day in sport arrives on Monday, when the Bears take on the Indianapolis Colts in the 41st Super Bowl final.
American football, and the Super Bowl, will forever remind me of an English winter in the mid-1980s. This was before the English
football premiership, when other sports still got a wee look-in around old Blighty.
American football was all the rage in some quarters then, thanks to a Sunday night wrap-up programme. In the dubious warmth of the hovel we called home, the Chicago Bears and American football arrived in a blaze of glory on a television barely worth the name in the winter of 1985-86.
That was, until now, the only season in which the Bears made the Super Bowl. They blitzed the New England Patriots.
Those Bears were more than just another winning football team. They were full of characters, and two in particular.
The self-appointed star was quarterback Jim McMahon, a smart-arse who could easily turn up at practice in a limousine and wearing a fur coat.
But the real star, on a world scale, was the large-scale William Perry, a defensive lineman known as The Refrigerator or The Fridge, which might also have been the nickname for our flat.
After a pre-season diet, Perry remained enormous even by the standards of today, where his 140kg-plus frame would be among the largest in this Bears squad.
Tales abounded of his diet. No fridge was safe in his presence, but he was more the size of the deep freeze you have to park in the garage.
Perry was even treated as a star by his famous coach Mike Ditka, who involved him in unusual plays in the Super Bowl.
Post football, Perry did the usual thing. The usual American thing, that is. Wrestling, boxing, rapping, even a hot-dog-eating competition - where he turned up, ate a mere three, took his money and scarpered.
The Bears' icon this season is a fierce man called Olin Kreutz, whose exploits include punching and breaking the jaws of two teammates. One of these incidents happened on an FBI shooting range. Only in America.
It's great to see the Bears back in business. Sport, like music, is a reminder of days past. For instance, I can still recall vividly where I was when the jaw-dropping news came through that the All Blacks had axed Buck Shelford.
Any mention of the Chicago Bears and the Super Bowl means one thing - a London winter, 1986.
