The Cruel Tutelage of Mike Ditka

"Listen, Jim, you're gonna have your critics. Screw em."-Mike Ditka

The ESPN writer didn't bait him. But the question was certainly loaded. If your job is to protect Justin Herbert, then why is he still the most battered quarterback in the NFL?

"Jim, when you talk about 'he's a warrior' and gritty, part of that is just (Herbert) taking a ruthless beating," Kris Rhim of ESPN said at Harbaugh's Monday press conference.

"I don't know if it's the group in front of him, his protection, what's going on. But when you came here, your charge was to get him protected […] but 2.5 years later, like you said, he still has to be a superhero for you guys to have a chance to win the game. Why is that?"

Harbaugh kept his composure. He did not blush, nor stammer. In the pause, he found the words and certainly did not, for an instant, ask himself, "What would Coach Ditka say to this guy?"

"Um," Harbaugh said while he modulated an expression somewhere between umbrage and exoneration. "Yeah, I don't know. That just sounds more like an insult than it does a question. But that's the way you look at it. I'm saying that, yeah, it's the kind of competitor that he is. I've never seen him flinch. I've never seen him rattled. He's an amazing inspiration, and that's what we do."

The pithy exchange made headlines, but if you're looking for tangible evidence that Harbaugh has let go of the rope in Los Angeles as the winless Chargers (0-4) prepare to take on the Denver Broncos Sunday, you had best stick to the All 22.

If you think that you can get under his skin—your fifteen seconds of fame for a viral crashout at the podium—then you are going to have to try harder.

Maybe ask Jim Kelly for some advice. Apparently you should never question Jim Harbaugh's toughness. Those are fighting words.*

---

Whatever lessons Jim Harbaugh gleaned under the cruel tutelage of Iron Mike Ditka, media training is not one of them. That is, unless you file them under: Things you learn not to do.

Mike Ditka has died. He was 86. He was Jim Harbaugh's coach for six years after the Bears selected him out of Michigan in the first round of the 1987 draft. He was an institution. He was a caricature. He was Chicago.

He was hot air, cigar smoke, and pork chops. He never met an endorsement he didn't like. If he hurt your feelings, well, then the pugilistic streak in him made his apologies sound like aspersion—because the admission of feelings was all the condemnation he needed. His hypocrisy ran deep; He had feelings too. We know because he wore them on his sleeve.

His family announced the death on Friday, and the outpouring of grief, memories, and Ditkaisms since reminds us of what has been lost.

"Man has done so much for our profession as a player, as a coach," said Harbaugh.

"May coach rest in peace. He's an American original. I loved playing for him."

The coach on the other side of the field today also played for Mike Ditka. Before Harbaugh ever played a snap as a rookie, the job was temporarily filled by Sean Payton, an undrafted kid from Eastern Illinois who appeared in three games when the Players Union went on strike.

Payton's cup of coffee in the pros is mostly an anecdotal footnote, but it is poignant that while the first-round stud from the University of Michigan, the guy with the prototypical physique and the jawline fit for Armani ads, held a picket sign, a 5'11" scab held his beer.

If Ditka's relationship with Payton was a fling, then his six years with Harbaugh were a marriage.

In 1992, the Bears were 2-2 and seeking to re-establish their superiority in the NFC Central when they came to Minneapolis. The remnants of the 1985 Super Bowl team remained, but their aura had long since vanished. Sure, Ditka still chewed his gum as if it came at the advice of his cardiologist; the Fridge still occupied the defensive line, and Saturday Night Live still ran the Superfans bit. Look it up. You can chew scenery and bratwurt simultaneously.

Leading 13-0, Harbaugh led a 16-play, 91-yard drive that devoured the opening 10:27 of the second half before calling his own number and running for a six-yard touchdown to make it 20-0. Note that we should place "calling his own number" in quotes, as I use the term euphemistically. Harbaugh certainly did not call the play himself.

The Bears had the Vikings on the ropes, and Ditka, ever the staunch conservative, was content to take the air out of the football with a steady diet of 4th quarter runs to Neal Anderson.

After the Vikings punted (again), Chicago had a first down at its 33-yard line. Harbaugh went to the line, determined the Vikings' secondary was playing too soft of a zone, and called "80 audible, which made Anderson, split out wide to the left, the primary receiver for a short pass. But the Metrodome's revelers drowned out Harbaugh's improvisation.

"I didn't hear it," Anderson said of the audible.

Caught by surprise when the pass came his way, Anderson never looked back as Vikings safety Todd Scott intercepted it and took it 35 yards for a touchdown. Harbaugh's lunging attempt at a tackle looked like something out of the ice capades.

When Harbaugh reached the sideline, Ditka grabbed for his facemask and crashed out. Later, Ditka said Harbaugh had been told not to audible because of the noise factor in the Metrodome.

Leading 20-7, the Bears still had time and opportunities to let Harbaugh share some of the blame for the collapse that ensued.

"He said don't call an audible if the noise is too loud. He left it up to me to determine," said Harbaugh. "At that point, I didn't think it was too loud."

Ditka's Bears were familiar with Ditka's meltdowns; on that afternoon they emulated the worst of them.

If it takes 53 guys and a dozen coaches to win an NFL game, then it takes just as many to lose one. Only Ditka would have none of it. Scott's interception gifted the Vikings the spark that rallied them towards a 21-20 victory.

It might be why Harbaugh the coach never airs out his own players to the media now.

"Sometimes, we're just too smart for our own selves," said Ditka after the game. "When there's a player who knows more than a coach, you've got a problem. If this happens again, there will be definite changes. ... We're not going to put 47 guys' careers in jeopardy for one guy."

Harbaugh did not single-handedly lose the game, but Ditka's pride made the audible the story.

Though remembered mostly for a sideline tantrum in 1992, theirs was a relationship that flourished away from the cameras. Ditka's appetite for victory reminded Harbaugh of his own father, Jack, another football lifer.

"He just expects you to be mentally tough," said Harbaugh years ago about playing for Ditka. "He expects you to be a football player. He expects you to be hard. Those are the kind of guys that you want to play for. That's the kind of guy he is himself."

It is difficult to get a read on head coach Harbaugh. Writers who spend any time with the man keep settling on the same word to describe his personality: Weird.

We all now know about his predilection for khaki pants, tucked-in sweatshirts, laser-sharp focus, and the odd pairing of milk with steaks. Measured by the analog currency of wins and losses, Harbaugh is worth every cent of the 16 million dollars that the Spanos family pays him annually. Harbaugh wins. Full stop. The NCAA made Harbaugh a pariah, but he won anyway.

While chatting with Harbaugh at the funeral service of another coaching luminary, former Stanford coach Bill Walsh, Ditka gave Harbaugh, who was coaching Stanford at the time, this advice.

"Listen, Jim, you're gonna have your critics. Screw em."

You can wear khaki pants into the sauna, or the ice tub, and we will snicker. But losing? It doesn't suit you, Jim.

From the day that they announced their intention to move the team from San Diego to Los Angeles on January 11, 2017, the Chargers have battled the perception that they were the grubby roommate unfit to inhabit the swanky new digs built by Rams owner Stan Kroenke. The team has slowly made inroads since, but Dean Spanos realized that winning is the only elixir to apathy.

Harbaugh was won too. The Chargers have won 11 games in the two full seasons with him at the helm and made the playoffs in both.

But that's where the losing starts. And though the page on the calendar turned, the Chargers have not.

The team with the best-looking uniforms, the dandiest social media team, and the circus freak passing angles of Justin Herbert does not move the needle in LA. Only trophies do that.

Winning makes your eccentricities an amusing side note. Losing makes you chum for the sharks, or, if you prefer, the Joe Biden memes.

"I always think of it like, you've really got to tell the truth when you get on the football field. Do you have talent? Have you put in the effort? Are you stronger, are you faster, or are you not? It happens out on the football field, almost like a truth serum." -Jim Harbaugh

The truth, so far, is that the Chargers are a sloppy team. They lead the NFL with 24 offensive penalties in four games and more often than not look like scabs who crossed a picket line.

---

*In 1997 that Harbaugh threw a punch at Jim Kelly (working as a broadcaster at the time) for criticizing his toughness. The Indianapolis Colts were 0-7 at that point, and Harbaugh was their banged-up quarterback. The punch was thrown at a hotel the night before a game against the Chargers in San Diego. It fractured a bone in his throwing hand.

---

Dominic Mucciacito, the Managing Editor of Rivers Lake Yacht Club, has followed pro football since he moved to San Diego in 1989. Blending an eye for theater, cinema, and style, he weaves contemporary subjects into an anecdotal tapestry. His long-form features—which focus primarily on the intersections of myth-making and anthropology—appear here and in the Los Angeles Journal. He refuses to use AI to speed up his process, so trust that every word has a human conception.