Before I come off as overly callous and insensitive to the needs of those that have made the game what it is today, let me say that i think that what Mike Ditka is doing needs to be done. What bothers me is the way he has gone about drawing attention. While I am only twenty and am not overly familiar with Ditka, I have always seen him as a pontificating, over-generalizing blabbermouth with no sense of what to say and what not to say. The saddest part of it all is that since Chicago is chock full of Ditka worshipers that would like nothing more than to buy every one of his ridiculously named products(Kick #### Red Liquor is one of his lead products), Ditka has, for the most part, gotten away with his antics. Because of that, it was even nicer to tune in to the Boers and Bernstein show(with Lawrence Holmes filling in for the former) on 670TheScore and hear Dan Bernstein laying it on Ditka. Bernstein isn't the only to notice that almost nothing Ditka says(not does) holds water. Hunter Hillenmeyer, a Vanderbilt graduate and the Bears' outside linebacker, voiced his displeasure with Ditka's empty claims in an interview almost a month ago. While i don't have access to what exactly he said, it was something along the lines of what I said, that Ditka is more or less just puffing smoke and that his statements are very empty and lack context. His recent episode aside, if you were to listen to Ditka on any of his radio shows in which he is simply talking football, it would be easy to see what i am talking about. When he talks football, which he undoubtably knows lots about, his claims are almost always vague, broad and very generalistic(Is that a word?).

When Ditka went in front of Congress with his complaints regarding Gene Upshaw and the Players' Union lack of funding for the injuries of the retired, in reality, all he did was act like a bully. He went up to the stand red faced with his neck veins bulging and spewed out threatening sounding sentences with very little stress on the facts and very empty claims. I'm not going to put up any quotes on this blog, but if anyone is interested in what he said in congress, or in any of his Gridiron Greats rants, the quotes are plastered all over the web. When all else fails, he usually falls back on his "Da Coach" charm and although thats enough for most fans, its not enough for me.

Now with the recent accusations directed towards Ditka's charity, his filibusters and attacks on Upshaw seem even less impressive, if at all possible. I have always felt that the best type of charity is one that doesn't garner any type of attention. Yeah, those that donate won't get the recognition they want, but really, if you are giving donations for publicity reasons, thats not much of a donation at all. If you use publicity to get donations its one thing, but the opposite really bother me. Ditka really needs to get his stuff together. I am not sure as to what Ditka should do from here on out, but it is pretty clear what he shouldn't be doing.