Mike Ditka, RIP

Mike Ditka died today at 86, his family announced. No cause was given.

His football résumé would carry anyone. He was the first tight end in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and he coached the 1985 Bears, who went 15-1 and crushed New England 46-10 in Super Bowl XX. It’s still the franchise’s only Super Bowl title.

The personality was even bigger. Ditka fought openly with his own quarterback, Jim McMahon, and his own defensive coordinator, Buddy Ryan. Then he turned himself into a cottage industry: restaurants, commercials, Halloween costumes, some acting and, of course, the famous SNL sketch.

Defector’s Ray Ratto argues that no sports figure ever fused with a city the way Ditka did with Chicago. The Bears traded him as a player and fired him as a coach, and he came back anyway. In Ratto’s words, he “wore his town like a sweater vest.”