Chicago Bears Were Grammy Nominees for Super Bowl Shuffle

It’s an anthem of a generation of Bears fans.  Cheesy?  Yes.  Arrogant?  Of course!  Prophetic?  Undoubtedly!  But did you know that the Chicago Bears were nominated for a Grammy for The Super Bowl Shuffle?

Yes, that’s right.  The Chicago Bears Shufflin’ Crew was nominated for Best R&B Performance, Duo or Group.  They lost out to Prince and the Revolution for Kiss.  I guess I never thought about it, but it’s ironic that Prince played the halftime show of the Bears’ lone trip back to the Super Bowl, the Bears’ 29-17 loss to the Colts in Super Bowl XLI.   

Of course, we can’t get through this post without an appearance by The Shufflin’ Crew:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2B74ii2F0Bw

If you’re looking for a cool article about some of the behind the scenes and history of the Super Bowl Shuffle, check out this post on Grantland.  It has some really cool interviews with Willie Gault, who put the whole thing together, other members of the Shufflin’ Crew, guys like Dan Hampton and Mike Ditka who were against the song and video and other producers of the song.  Pretty cool stuff including this bit from Ken Valdiserri, the Bears’ director of PR and director of marketing, about how he found out about the song:

"The Bears organization didn’t find out about this until they already had made the recording and were planning the video. We had to be brought in the loop because of trademarks and copyrights and proprietary issues. We didn’t like it from two different perspectives. One, it came to us in such a hurried and quick fashion, and secondarily, the whole concept of being presumptuous about the team going to the Super Bowl could make us look foolish. Rather than creating total internal chaos within the rank and file we decided to enable it, and that created the need to take it up the ladder not only with team but league officials."

Give the article a read and reminisce about the good ole’ days because no team will ever have the guts to put out a song like this predicting a trip to the Super Bowl again.