The Seattle Seahawks and the New England Patriots clinched their spots in Super Bowl LX Sunday night with a pair of nail-biting games that sent E Street Band guitarist Steve Van Zandt into overdrive on X with real-time posts like “My god what a hit. Geezus!,” “Idiotic play calling. Idiotic!,” and “I’m sorry but there’s no such thing as a cover sack. You throw the fucking ball away.”
The Super Bowl is Feb. 8, which may seem a little odd for old-timers out there, since it took place in January up until 2003, when the NFL extended the regular season. That’s why today is the 40th anniversary of the legendary 1986 Super Bowl, where the Chicago Bears won their first NFL Championship since 1963 with an all-star roster that included Walter Payton, Jim McMahon, Richard Dent, Mike Singletary, Dan Hampton, and William “Refrigerator” Perry.
These names may not be familiar to the youth of today, but they were so famous back in 1985 that they actually recorded a rap song that hit Number 41 on the Hot 100, sold over a million copies on VHS and Betamax, and has been parodied countless times over the years. We’re talking, of course, about the immortal classic “The Super Bowl Shuffle.”
As the fascinating new HBO documentary The Shuffle reveals, nobody involved with the song thought it would become nearly as popular as it became. And it put enormous pressure on the team to actually make the Super Bowl that season so they didn’t all look like fools.
The song also hit at a time when many people still saw rap as a novelty. That’s why we had things like Rodney Dangerfield’s comedy LP Rappin’ Rodney and “Honeymooners Rap” by Joe Piscopo and Eddie Murphy. But those three comedians sound practically like Rakim or Eminem next to the vast majority of 1980s Chicago Bears players, who were also forced to do a line dance. (Spoiler alert: They can dance just about as well as they can rap.)
Many of the players reunited for a Boost Mobile commercial in 2010 that parodied the song, and Saturday Night Live created a mock Behind The Music documentary about it when Tom Brady hosted in 2005. But the Onion beat them all to it in 1998 with a hilarious spoof article about their attempt to record a new track.
“According to Shufflin’ Crew member William ‘Refrigerator’ Perry, Willie Gault and punky QB Jim McMahon have already sketched out rough demo versions of 10 to 15 songs, which will, over the next two months, be fleshed out in the studio with producer Steve Albini,” reads the Onion article. “All of the original Shufflin’ Crew members are expected to participate in the reunion except Otis Wilson, who told Spin magazine in a recent interview that his ‘heart just isn’t in it anymore.’ Numerous names have circulated as possible Wilson replacements, ranging from former Poco bassist Jim Messina to former Bengals running back Ickey Woods.”
This may sound sacrilegious to Bears fans, but icons of the game like McMahon, Perry, and Payton are remembered more today for “The Super Bowl Shuffle” than any of their achievements on the field. Football games come and go, we have a Super Bowl every year, but there’s only one “Super Bowl Shuffle.” That doesn’t mean the winners of the Patriots/Seahawks game should attempt their own. The original cannot be topped.
