Steve McMichael, or “Mongo” as he is known, is back in the headlines these days. On Wednesday multiple sources reported that he will indeed, finally, be voted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. His induction into the hallowed halls at Canton comes at a time when he is fighting a very public battle with ALS.
Simply put, as I wrote in my first book, Mongo was the greatest exclusive interview that I’ve ever had, over the course of my 20 year career in journalism.
So with that in mind, we re-post this exclusive, conducted in July 2010 when he was enshrined into the College Football Hall of Fame, in two parts
Here it is:
The NFL is the richest, most powerful sports league going these days. Therefore, they have the most money to spend on spin control and message manipulation.
However, retired NFL players (and this goes for older ex-jocks across the board in sports, not just football) are almost a million times more quotable than what you will hear from athletes currently beholden to the corporatespeak of NFL public relations departments. Steve McMichael is not just the opposite of that, he’s on another, unclassifiable level.
When interviewing him, you can’t really do Q & A.
The 1985 Chicago Bears and Texas Longhorns legend is way too smart and far too interesting for that.
Instead, the process is like a word association exercise. And the end result resembles the feeling one gets from playing a radio controlled boat game at an amusement park. You put an effort in towards steering the vessel in the direction you want it to go, but there’s no guarantee you’ll actually get to your intended destination.
And even if you do, it won’t be via your intended path.
Before you get to the core of what McMichael is about, you must first realize that “Mongo” is a character he plays on television, and in the media.
Before I sat down for my exclusive with him, on the evening he was enshrined at the college football hall of fame, he confirmed as such.
“All the press around America looks at me like, oh Mongo, he’s going to tell you: f*** you, you vulture. The jig is up. That was an act. It was a good act though, it intimidated a lot of motherf***rs.”
That prompts him to tell me about Ben Hogan’s statement, after the professional golfer came back from a serious car wreck to win the U.S. Open. “There’s three ways to win, you can out-think ‘em, out-work ‘em or you can intimidate ‘em. You put all three of ‘em together and you’re going to win, right?”
And intimidation also worked well for McMichael within the mythology of “Bear Weather” itself.
“I’m out there with a t-shirt on and my arms bare at the fifty yard line staring at the other team acting like I wasn’t cold. The jig is up, I was freezing my a** off. What you learn playing in cold weather is, you can’t put enough clothes on to stay warm.
In ’83, one game when it was 20 below, a wind chill factor of almost 60 below and when you go on the field and realize the steak in your freezer is warmer than your a**, how can you put enough clothes on to stay warm?” McMichael said.
“The more layers you put on, the more you’re slowing yourself down, so just go out there and put up with it. It’s the same as a warm weather game, so you’re in that same rhythm, without all that extra bondage on yourself,” he continued.
McMichael is drinking hard liquor on the rocks while doing this interview, adding to the ambience. Picked in the 3rd round out of Texas in the 1980 NFL Draft by the New England Patriots, Mongo came into his own after being signed by the Bears as a free agent in 1981.
He was a starting defensive tackle on the Super Bowl winning team of 1985; and he also led the 1988 conference finalist team in sacks. McMichael made two Pro Bowls and once had a string of 101 consecutive games started.
And I absolutely LOVED his work on television.
So did the committee in charge of handing out a very prestigious and famous award.
“I’ve got the angel holding the globe (an Emmy) in my ME ROOM. One of my trophies baby, cuz I used guys as foils.”
Especially during the ‘90s when he paired with (and tortured) co-host Mark Giangreco on NBC 5 Chicago’s “Sports Sunday.” I brought up my favorite anecdote from that series, and it actually turned out to be his favorite bit as well.
“That was my favorite one, he had picked us to be 8-8 and out of the playoffs.
“Well, we had a great record and won the division. So after we did, I said Mark, you picked us to be out of the playoffs didn’t ya? I took a raw egg, and went SPLAT. Now don’t you feel like you have egg on your face now?”
About halfway through the interview, the PR/Special Events Director of the Hall of Fame politely interrupts us to remind McMichael that he must join the others soon, and take the scheduled enshrinement class photo.
Her appearance elicits a classic “If I wasn’t married”….etc. etc. etc. line that was truly a “you had to be there” kind of moment.
And Mongo ends this flirtatious overture by reminding himself, her, and I guess me as well, since I happened to be there, where his priorities really are these days.
Full of pride, he proclaims that his two-year-old daughter is in charge these days.
Part two of the Steve McMichael exclusive will run tomorrow morning.
Paul M. Banks is the Founding Editor of The Sports Bank. He’s also the author of “Transatlantic Passage: How the English Premier League Redefined Soccer in America,” and “No, I Can’t Get You Free Tickets: Lessons Learned From a Life in the Sports Media Industry.”
He currently contributes to Ravens Wire, part of the USA Today SMG’s NFL Wire Network. His past bylines include the New York Daily News, Sports Illustrated, Chicago Tribune and the Washington Times. You can follow him on Twitter.