DAWN OF THE MONSTERS

Forty Summers Ago, A Small Wisconsin Town Prepared for A Bears Invasion

By Clete Campbell Windy City End Zone

Platteville, Wisconsin June 1985 (46: 40 Years, 6 Weeks Til Training Camp in Bears Time)

The Bears Invasion, pro football’s version of the Beatles hitting American shores in 1964, was still weeks away, but Team Platteville was already fast at work, setting personal 40-yard dash records as they readied for Year 2 of the biggest thing to hit this Southwest Wisconsin town since the Platteville Brewery opened up on Mineral Street way back in the Civil War Days of 1865.

The brewery, and all of today’s famed pubs on Platteville’s legendary 2nd Street, was originally inhabited by “Badgers” (the name given to the mining town’s local lead fortune seekers). Soon, 2nd Street would be inhabited by Bears, the sweaty, thirsty kind.

How much Bud Light, Old Style and Pabst Blue Ribbon will the average Bears defensive end drink this year?” the bar owner wondered, looking at the autographed photos of Steve “Mongo” McMichael and Dan “The Danimal” Hampton on his wall.

A local motorcycle dealership started looking into inventory on red scooters at the request of a young punky quarterback named Jim McMahon, who hoped to give them to his boys for dashes around town.

Meanwhile, on the campus of University of Wisconsin-Platteville, the Bears’ gracious hosts for their fast-approaching training camp for the 1985 season, UW-P’s food services director starred at his refrigerator wondering how much food the average human refrigerator (aka: William “The Refrigerator” Perry) consumes on a daily basis.

A couple years earlier, UW-P football coach George Chryst had received a phone call out of the clear blue Southwestern Wisconsin sky from a 312 area code number. He pinched himself to make sure what he was hearing was real.

The Chicago Bears wanted to come train in the rolling hills of his small Grant County town, (population 7,682).

“When George got the call from the Bears, he had the football end of it and I had the administrative end of it,’’ UW-P’s Steve Zielke, who was handling food and housing operations on campus, told The Cap Times. (Platteville: home to Chicago Bears, Bo Ryan, Walter Payton | Sports | captimes.com ) “They wanted to get the team away from distractions. It’s identical to what the Badgers (who preseason train at UW-P today) are doing now.”

The Bears were looking for a place to get their players out of the city, out of the media spotlight and out of trouble as they prepared for the season. They were also looking for a place close to Lake Forest that even a rookie long snapper could find with a Rand McNally map.

“When they came here to visit, we took them through the back roads so they really thought they were out in the country, which is where they wanted to be,” Zielke said. “Their reps were visiting different campuses and Whitewater was next. George decided we’d keep them here until it got dark.”

For Da Bears, Platteville was the dawn of what coach Mike Ditka was hoping was the next great era of Chicago Bears football.

“I hope being in Platteville will bring us together as a team,” Ditka said on eve of the Bears’ first camp in Platteville in 1984. “That’s one of our goals. If we can do that, it would be a tremendous step forward for us.’’

Platteville’s loving, Bear Down outreach to the team quickly won Iron Mike over.

“I think there could be a great relationship between this community and the Bears for a long time,” Da Coach would say after the Bears’ first practice in Platteville.

And so, a beautiful 18-year friendship and back roadside pro football attraction set up tent in Platteville. It soon became a circus as the most colorful collection of football characters in NFL history drew upward of 100,000 fans annually to watch them train for the big hope and hype season upcoming.

And in Summer 1985, a season in which a rock n roll loving teenager named Marty McFly would take an iconic trip back in time, Platteville prepped for the arrival of a wild team with Super Bowl ambitions after a run to the 1984 NFC Championship Game.

They made sure the Iconic M, the grueling 266-step hill Bears running back Walter Payton loved to scale before practices, was in tip-top scaling condition.

“Can’t run the hill anymore,’’ former UW-P and Wisconsin men’s basketball coach Bo Ryan lamented years later. “Now there’s a bunch of solar panels on it.’’

They also made sure UW-P campus staff was aware the notorious prankster’s love for setting off fireworks in the dorms at 4 a.m.

“To host a training camp on the scale of Platteville required tremendous effort by a lot of people,” former Platteville Chamber of Commerce executive director Kathy Kopp told The Badger Herald. (Platteville aims to keep Bears legacy – The Badger Herald)

They had no idea of the wild rollercoaster football rock ‘n’ roll freight train that was coming their way. But they were Bearing down and getting ready for the ride. It would be the football ride of their lives.

For the Dawn of the Monsters of the Midway was coming.

“It was almost like following The Beatles, quite honestly,” former Bears public relations and marketing director Ken Valdiserri would say. “It almost had that sort of aura to it.

“There’s nothing like it, nothing that I think could ever be replicated in professional sports.”

AUTHOR'S POSTSCRIPT: Forty years later, Walter Payton’s epic training ascents up Platteville’s Mighty M are remembered atop the famed hill.

“Atop this hill a bench and a plaque that shows Walter’s face and list his accomplishments. Otherwise, there seemed no evidence of the man who ran the hill,” Rich Cohen wrote in “Monsters: The 1985 Chicago Bears and the Wild Heart of Football. “That’s the thing about work. It vanishes like a memory of pain.

The true arrival of the Monsters of the Midway came in Platteville, Wis., during the wild summer of 1985.

“Only the results are remembered.”