Kyle’s Reviews > Monsters: The 1985 Chicago Bears and the Wild Heart of Football > Status Update

I was just going through some old football cards and found a Jim McMahon card and thought about this team, they felt like an anomaly.

Kyle- this is one of my all time favorites! They had a good run. Should have won another one

Scot wrote: "I was just going through some old football cards and found a Jim McMahon card and thought about this team, they felt like an anomaly."

What a find! I lived in West Germany during most of the 1980s. I can't recall if I ever saw a Jim McMahon card, but I do recall watching as many of the 1985 Bears games as possible on the Armed Forces Network. I wound up reading about the Superbowl XX game in the Stars & Stripes newspaper! It was challenging to watch Superbowls in Germany because of the time difference. However, I stayed up very late for some! The Bears were everywhere in 1985-86!

I believe the only football cards I still have are of the K.C. Chiefs roster from the late '80s and early '90s. I was a big fan of the Chiefs in the early '90s when most around me were Cowboys fans (I also lived in a region in the States referred to "Texoma"!). The 1990-95 Cowboys were a great team though.

BTW, in ca. 2005 I unexpectedly met one of the Mary Schottenheimer (RIP) era running backs, Christian Okoye, aka "The Nigerian Nightmare"!

LPosse1 wrote: "Kyle- this is one of my all time favorites! They had a good run. Should have won another one"

Good to hear, and they sure did! Do I recall correctly that Jim McMahon was plagued with injuries during the 1986 season?

I've found there aren't very many genre books that I enjoy as much as 20th century pro football team stories. Some of my favorite childhood and young adult memories were watching games with my paternal grandfather, my dad and my brother. The 1970s - '80s was a great time to be a kid and grow up. I was definitely still growing in the 1990s though.

I'm enjoying Monsters...and here are previous pro football books I've enjoyed:

Paul Brown's Ghost: How the Cleveland Browns and Cincinnati Bengals Are Haunted by the Man Who Created Them

Ice Bowl '67: The Packers, the Cowboys, and the Game that Changed the NFL

When It Was Just a Game: Remembering the First Super Bowl

Last Call: Memoirs of an NFL Referee