Just Like Papa Played

Football, as the pros love to say, is a game of infinite complexity -- and George Stanley Halas of the Chicago Bears has done as much as anyone to muddle things up. He revived the T-formation, invented the man-in-motion initiated the use of spread ends. He was the first coach to use movies regularly for spotting mistakes and plotting strategy. ("They ran the same play 30 times, without saying a word," marveled an onlooker at one early Chica go screening session. "Finally someone said, 'It's the goddamned guard,' and the meeting was over.") Now that everybody else has stolen his stuff, George Halas has come up with something new --and the Chicago Bears are probably on their way to their eighth National Football League championship. Halas's latest gimmick: no gimmicks at all.

The 1963 Bears are the dullest team in pro football-- to anybody but a connoisseur of crunch. They hug the ground defiantly, pass only under duress, rank No. 8 in the fourteen-team N.F.L. m scoring (with 233 points) and No. 11 in total offense (with 3,329 yds.). That kind of football is hardly calculated to win friends and influence fans: last month, when the Bears beat the lowly Los Angeles Rams 6-0 on the strength of two field goals they played most of the second half to the accompaniment of home-town boos But the Bears make no excuses: "It may be exciting to see the ball in the air," says Quarterback Billy Wade, "but t is just as exciting to win." And on that score, Chicago fans have little to complain about: the Bears boast nine wins, only one loss, one tie.

Getting the Message. Secret of the Bears success is a brutal defense that has allowed eleven opponents an average of just nine points a game Chicago's fearsome "Front Four"-- Tackles Earl Leggett and Stan Jones, Ends Doug Atkins and Ed O'Bradovich-- have the beef (253 lbs. per man) to squash a running attack, the speed to put constant pressure on enemy passers Assistant Coach George Allen insists that Larry Morris (230 lbs.), Bill George (235 lbs.) and Joe Fortunato (225 lbs ) are the "three best linebackers in football." Pass defense? The Bears' opportunist secondary has intercepted 29 passes--tops in the N.F.L. "This is an attacking defense," says Allen, and the defending-champion Green Bay Packers know what he means. Fortnight ago the Bears recovered two fumbles, intercepted five passes, as Chicago trounced the Packers for the second time this season, 26-7. Moaned Packer Coach Vince Lombardi: "They just beat the hell out of us."

Gone are the esoteric defensive patterns fancied by longtime Assistant Coach Clark Shaughnessy (who quit last season after an angry tiff with Halas)--the 20-odd formations, the constant red dogs, the complicated codes used for calling signals in the defensive huddle (example: "Blue Hairy Flag, 38, Slide Up"). This year's Bears have but seven basic formations, get their signals in plain English. "It's old-fashioned football," says Coach Halas "Just like I used to play."

Busy Hands. A workaday end and halfback under Bob Zuppke at Illinois Halas had his greatest moment when a football blew up as it was kicked off by an Illini opponent. Halas grabbed the deflated ball and took off, waving it like a handkerchief as he ran "I got all the way to the 40 before somebody thought to tackle me," he chuckles. Signed as a rightfielder by the New York Yankees in 1919, Halas played in 12 games and batted .091. The Yanks lost little time replacing him with an ex-Boston pitcher named George Herman Ruth. Back to football went Halas --as coach, trainer, ticket seller, publicity man and player for the Decatur Ill., Staleys, later called the Chicago Staleys and later still (in 1922) named the Chicago Bears.

In those days, pro football was insouciant and insolvent; Halas turned it into a thriving business practically overnight. Drawn by such magical names as Red Grange and Bronko Nagurski, fans swarmed to see the Bears play; in 1925, 70,000 turned out for a game in Los Angeles. No slouch himself as a player, Halas set an N.F.L. record by running 98 yds. with a recovered fumble (the fumbler: Jim Thorpe)--but he is better remembered as perhaps the best illegal user of hands in the game.

So Get Hurt. Chicago's "Papa Bear" is 68 now; his hair is taking a permanent leave of absence, and his spectacles are as thick as the bottoms of shot glasses. But he has not mellowed a whit. Teeth clenched, hands thrust deep into his overcoat pockets, he follows the ball up and down the field bellowing at his players, badgering officials, blatantly coaching from the sideline. Trying to lend moral assistance to a Bear field-goal attempt, he once booted a 240-lb. guard right off the bench. Another time, he curtly ordered a rookie:"Taylor, we've run out of time outs. Go in and get hurt." Even tougher with a buck, Halas has been known to wrestle fans for the football after extra-point plays, and a player on a visiting team once complained that Halas provided only two bars of soap for 36 players. To a Bear player who pleaded for an advance "to buy my kid milk " Halas gallantly replied: "What's his address? I'll send him a quart."

A hard taskmaster, Halas works 16 hours a day, seven days a week, interrupts his routine only for church on Sundays (he is a Roman Catholic). On three occasions--in 1930, in 1942, in 1956--he has stepped down from 'the coaching ranks. But now the thought of retirement brings a laugh. "I can't stay away," he admits, and nobody can make him: Halas owns 91% of the Chicago Bears Football Club, Inc.

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