[CBFF] Finally... a GREAT read on Urlacher

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http://www.sportingnews.com/yourturn/viewtopic.php?t=144534

NFL Expert Dan Pompei


The Urlacher phenomenon
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Posted: November 2, 2006

 The Pope is Catholic.

  The sun is hot.

Rain is wet.

And Brian Urlacher is popular.

Sure, Urlacher is popular. He's a damn good player. Defensive Player of the
Year last season. A five-time Pro Bowl selectee. In the Bears' Monday night
game against the Cardinals, he might have played the best game anyone has
played at any position this season.

But there is more to it.

He's more than just a guy who makes a lot of plays. It's how he makes plays
with perhaps the most implausible size-speed ratio of any player ever: 6-4,
258 with a 4.5 40-yard dash. In an aquarium full of incredible specimens, he
is the fish every kid points at. Even in Hawaii, the other Pro Bowl players
are in awe of him every year. When the Bears review tape of their previous
game, teammates routinely ask to see the play Urlacher made one more time.

He plays middle linebacker for the Bears, which is kind of like playing
Queen for England. The scepter has been passed from Hall of Famer to Hall of
Famer, legend to legend. Bill George, considered to be the NFL's first true
middle linebacker, gave it to Dick Butkus, perhaps the NFL's greatest player
ever, who passed it to Mike Singletary, the heart of the NFL's best defense
ever, who passed it to Urlacher.

Chicago icons all.

The Chicago area is home to 9.4 million people, which makes it the
third-largest metropolitan area in the United States, the second-largest
metropolitan area that fields an NFL team and the largest metropolitan area
with only one NFL team. Taking into account these factors, as well as the
tradition and history of the Bears, it's possible the Bears have more fans
than any team in the league.

Yes, he is the perfect player in the perfect place. But there is more to it.


Crew cut. Bare-armed in the Chicago winter. No dancing, no trash-talk, no
jewelry except for a watch, no calling attention to himself. He's nothing at
all like the NFL's other transcendent middle linebacker, Ray Lewis.

Urlacher's image is poetic.

None of it is affected. Nothing Urlacher does is motivated by what you think
about him.

He has been getting his hair cut like this since he was in eighth grade.
Back then, a buddy used to cut it because the price was right. The reason
for the frequent clips? His neck gets "furry" and that drives him nuts.

He's Butkus all over again, right? Well, no, he's not. Butkus is who Chicago
wanted Urlacher to be initially. But he doesn't have Butkus' lack of
compassion. Get this -- Urlacher never has been in a fistfight in his life.
He can't even remember having an enemy. He quietly buys 50 tickets for every
Bears home game and gives them to kids from the Special Olympics and Mercy
Home for Boys and Girls.

His teammates sometimes bring out the Butkus in him. "If you don't do your
job, he'll be the first one in your face," defensive end Alex Brown says.
"Players on most teams, when they mess up, they don't want to go back to the
sideline. Here, it's, 'Dang, I don't want to get back in the huddle because
I know he's going to rip me apart.' He knows where everybody is supposed to
be, and he's huge on being accountable."

The Urlacher we see is the one with a big open-mouthed smile and his head
flung back. He laughs on the field as much as any player in the league. His
joy for the game is childlike, and it reverberates in the hearts of fans.

Yes, he makes us smile. But there is more to it.

When Urlacher's popularity is discussed, there always is a pink elephant in
the room. Or rather, a white elephant. He is a white man in a largely
nonwhite world playing to an audience that is largely white. The truth is
he's the NFL's only white superstar who doesn't line up under center.

A survey taken by the Sporting News showed 69 percent of NFL players are not
white, as defined by U.S. census standards. The average number of white
players on a 53-man roster is 16.5. The Jaguars have a league-low nine, and
the Colts have a league-high 22.

If Urlacher's ancestors were from Africa and not Germany, would he be as
popular?

Dr. Maureen Smith, a sports sociologist at Sacramento State, believes fans
choose heroes who look like them. "He's popular for a lot of reasons, and
partly because he's white," Smith says. "In a sport where people who look
like him are increasingly losing that position, he kind of represents the
last of the throwback players like Dick Butkus."

It isn't uncommon for African Americans on other teams to question the
amount of attention Urlacher gets. Browns linebacker Andra Davis has asked
his friend Alex Brown if Urlacher is all people say he is. "Yeah," Brown
answers. "He's everything people say. Plus."

The interesting part of this is those who know Urlacher will tell you he
crosses the boundaries as comfortably as Illinois Senator Barack Obama, a
potential presidential candidate. Bears defensive end Adewale Ogunleye
marvels at how Urlacher relates to every teammate, whether he's from Hawaii
or New York.

Many of Urlacher's best friends are African Americans. His son is half
African American. He and his brother, Casey, get their hair cut every Friday
at the Hair Gallery in North Chicago. They get stares, not only because of
who Urlacher is but also because they are the only white guys in the place.
His iPod plays a country song, then a rap song.

Yes, he is precisely what America wants. But there is more to it.

This is a celebrity who has not figured out he's supposed to demand that the
browns be removed from his M&M bowl. A self-described "hick" who can
envision himself living in his hometown of Lovington, N.M., when he retires,
Urlacher is oblivious to his fame, bewildered by his popularity.

This is part of his appeal. He never puts up a wall, so fans aren't nervous
or apprehensive when they approach him. It's more "Hey, Brian, how ya
doin'?" as opposed to, "Mi ... Mi ... Mr. Urlacher, co ... co ... could I
please have your autograph?"

He's even accessible. You might catch him at Dave and Buster's, a
restaurant-bar-arcade where Urlacher and his buddies have accumulated nearly
enough points by playing games in the past year to purchase a lakefront
condominium. You could bump into him at Bob Chinn's Crab House, where he
always orders the Jonah stone crab, oysters and fried shrimp with green
beans. Oh, and a side salad with Thousand Island and a bunch of sunflower
seeds. You might see him mingling at Spoon, a popular nightclub. You could
even find him waiting in a long line with his kids to ride The Many
Adventures of Winnie the Pooh at Disney World.

Urlacher is clean off the field, though imperfect like the rest of us. He
has a broken marriage. He fathered a child out of wedlock, which many would
deem irresponsible.

But he took the mother to court to fight for custody of the child. How many
men in his position would have done that? Urlacher, who grew up without his
father around, wants to be his son's father. He wants to take responsibility
for the child he brought into the world. Now that's a man.

Urlacher is grounded because of his roots. Humility is easy to come by when
you are the son of a single mother who worked three jobs to support the
family. It becomes ingrained when you can afford to buy only one pair of
shoes each year. It never leaves you after you've worked in the oil fields
and lumberyards and had jobs delivering water and mowing grass.

Yes, he is anything but self-important. But there is more to it.

You don't know a lot about Brian Urlacher. He won't let you because he
distrusts most of the media.

But that doesn't stop you from liking him. Somehow, you feel like you know
what kind of guy he is. And you know what? Somehow, you do.

It doesn't bother him much when he's the target of media criticism. Two
years ago when the Sporting News, citing an anonymous poll of talent
evaluators, called him the NFL's most overrated player, he shrugged it off
after the initial irritation dissipated. Nor is he sweating about a recent
Sports Illustrated poll of NFL players that named him the second most
overrated player in the game.

But don't mess with his teammates, of whom he's very protective. Mother hen
protective. He was infuriated when the press was calling for quarterback Rex
Grossman to be benched in the preseason. Livid when cornerback Ricky Manning
was vilified after a recent brush with the law.

His teammates and coaches are as protective of him as he is of them, and
they defend Urlacher vociferously and passionately. "Calling him overrated
is ridiculous, probably the stupidest thing I've ever heard," Bears center
Olin Kreutz says, spitting each word. "The only thing you can say is people
are jealous. I'm not saying it because he's my friend. I'm saying it because
I watch film and I practice against him. People can't do what he does."

Even though Brown says Urlacher is recognizable from his shadow alone,
Urlacher does not like being singled out as the face of the Bears. When he
recently was asked to pose for a magazine cover, he declined -- unless a
teammate could be in the shot as well. He is nothing if not one of the guys.


Safety Tyler Everett is an obscure player in the Bears' locker room. After
being passed over in the draft last April, he signed with the Broncos. Cut
before the season, he joined the Bears' practice squad. Everett wasn't in
Chicago five minutes before Urlacher was at his locker introducing himself.
"He took me in like one of the regular guys and was one of the first to do
that," Everett says. When the Bears released Everett in October, Urlacher
phoned him. "Here's the superstar of the team asking if I'm OK, worrying
about me," says Everett, who subsequently was re-signed. "He tells me if I
need anything to let him know. He always says to come by the house if I'm
not doing anything."

You'd like to be invited to Urlacher's home in suburban Chicago as most of
his teammates frequently are. They dress in camouflage and have paintball
wars in his wooded backyard. They shoot pool and play cards, pingpong and
air hockey. They watch fights. And they always can count on a nice spread if
they're hungry.

He is a team captain who earns the designation daily. Teammates say he's the
kind of guy they would call at 4 a.m. for a ride if they were stranded.

Yes, he is the kind of guy you'd want to be your friend. But there is more
to it.

As big and tough as Urlacher is, children are not intimidated by him. In
fact, they are drawn to the father of three.

Recently, the young son of a teammate heard about the "Take a Bear to
School" program. His mother asked the boy if he wanted his famous father to
come to school with him. "No, Mom," he said. "I want Lach to come."

Kids know people. They just know.

Urlacher, two friends, their spouses and their children recently went to a
Red Robin restaurant. While the adults talked and ate burgers, the five kids
fought for position on Urlacher's lap. Most of his time was occupied feeding
the kids and getting balloons.

When Urlacher has been the host of birthday parties for his kids at Chuck E.
Cheese's, nobody has had more fun than him. "We went berserk in there," he
says. "I love the skee ball and the basketball. The best game is when you
put the coins in and it flips and knocks the coins off. That's the best. I
spent like a hundred bucks on that game."

In his heart, he is stuck somewhere between 10 and 12. Part Peter Pan, part
Incredible Hulk, Urlacher is forever goofing with teammates, playing pranks
and keeping the locker room loose. He has set a lighthearted tone for what
could be football's finest team. Wiffle Ball in the locker room, scaring
people, knocking teammates' playbooks off their desks during meetings.
Urlacher is behind all of it.

Typical day at Halas Hall. Urlacher is in the linebackers room ostensibly
watching tape. Ogunleye walks by. Urlacher: "Come in here, Wale, I want you
to see this play." Ogunleye enters and sits. Urlacher lets out a
high-pitched "cukoooo," also known as the linebackers' "distress" call.
Before Ogunleye can look up, he is surrounded by seven linebackers, who are
ready to administer a playful beating.

Yes, he's a fun playmate. But there is more to it.

You see, in the athlete you and I could never be, we can see ourselves. Yes,
we can actually see ourselves. Or at least the parts of ourselves we would
like to see.

And somewhere in that mystery lies the explanation for the popularity of
Brian Urlacher.