Whoever coined the idea that you should root for the teams in your division once your team has been eliminated clearly doesn’t understand rivalry in sports.
But apparently that very idea applies to the Green Bay Packers’ brass.
In an interview with the Sun Times’ Patrick Finley, Bears matriarch Virginia McCaskey discussed everything from growing up with the Bears to making friends with Walter Payton and Brian Piccolo to justifying her father George Halas’ belief in her.
There was a particularly interesting nugget, as it relates to the Bears-Packers rivalry.
Last December, the Bears were one win away from clinching the NFC North and locking up the team’s first playoff berth in eight years. An hour before kickoff, McCaskey was talking with Packers brass, and they said something that shocked her.
“The Packers people were very gracious,” she recalled. “They said if they’re not in it, they’ll be rooting for us.”
The same couldn’t be said for McCaskey.
“I’m standing there thinking, ‘They’re nicer than I am.’”
Simply put: McCaskey would never find herself rooting for the Packers, let alone telling her rivals as much.
It’s a sign of the bitter rivalry between the Bears and Packers, that has stretched for 97 seasons, as well as an appreciation or the history of the team McCaskey’s father founded. You’d have to believe Papa Bear is proud.
