"Bill Swerski's Superfans" was a recurring sketch about Chicago sports fans on the American sketch comedy program Saturday Night Live. It was a prominent feature from 1991 to 1992, and its characters have made various other appearances since its inception. The sketch is notable as a media portrayal of the Inland North dialect of American English that predominates in Chicago, most famously through the distinctive pronunciation of the phrase "Da Bears" (IPA: pronounced as /[ˈd̪ʌː ˌbeɻs]/).
Shortly after Robert Smigel moved from New York to Chicago in 1983 to start his career in comedy, he made his first visit to Wrigley Field to see the Cubs play. He noticed a prevalence of large men who wore walrus mustaches and aviator sunglasses, a look similar to Mike Ditka, who had been hired to coach the city's NFL team, the Chicago Bears, the year before. "There was just a swagger among these very virile-looking men", he recalled. "All sports fans kind of have it."[1]
In the following years, that swagger was rewarded as the fortunes of the city's teams improved. The Cubs and the White Sox both made the playoffs for the first time in decades, the National Basketball Association's Bulls drafted Michael Jordan and in 1985 the Bears capped a 15–1 regular season with victory in Super Bowl XX. Smigel began conceiving of characters based on that sort of fan, and the line "Da Bears!", but could not imagine a setting that would work. He told an improv classmate, Bob Odenkirk, a native of nearby Naperville, about his idea, and Odenkirk reminded him to include the slight hiss with which the word ends when pronounced with a strong enough Chicago accent, something only natives of the area would appreciate.
Smigel and Odenkirk eventually joined the writing staff of Saturday Night Live (SNL) but did not write the sketch until the 1988 writers' strike, when they returned to Chicago to stage the improvisational Happy Happy Good Show, as "Chicago Superfans".[2] At that time, played by Smigel, Odenkirk and Dave Reynolds (with an occasional appearance by Conan O'Brien as one of the fan's sons), they were simply sitting on lawn chairs and drinking beer, but making the wild imaginative leaps by which they could assume the Bears would handily win another Super Bowl. The sketch drew considerable laughter, but when it came time to stage the show in Los Angeles, Smigel cut it, believing audiences there would not understand it. "I'd never thought of it as something that could work on national television," he said, "because it just felt so regional."
In January 1991, Chicago native Joe Mantegna hosted SNL. Odenkirk suggested to Smigel that they pitch the premise to him. Mantegna liked it, and the writers finally came up with a setting, parodying The Sports Writers on TV, a long-running Chicago-area radio show that had been adapted for television by local UHF channel WFLD-TV in 1985, featuring three veteran local sportswriters, including Bill Gleason, known for his thick Chicago accent, and Rick Telander, a relative newcomer, sitting around a table and discussing Chicago sports. Odenkirk imagined what the show would be like if its panelists were average fans rather than sportswriters. "The key was that table", said Sports Writers producer John Roach. "Men gathered at a table talking about the shit in an unscripted way that lets you eavesdrop on it." The name "Bill Swerski" was a play on the name of Chuck Swirsky, a Chicago sportscaster.
The sketch premiered on January 12, 1991, hours before the Bears were to play the New York Giants in a divisional playoff game at Giants Stadium, a few miles from NBC's Studio 8H in Rockefeller Center. Mantegna starred as Bill Swerski, along with Chris Farley as Todd O'Connor, Mike Myers as Pat Arnold, and Robert Smigel as Carl Wollarski, a part that the writer had intended for Phil Hartman but was assigned by the show's head writer, James Downey, because Downey believed Smigel's accent was more authentic. Smigel said it was easy to play, as the sunglasses allowed him to read the cue cards without anyone noticing, and he could eat during the sketch, which helped him relax. Kevin Nealon also made a brief appearance as oddsmaker Danny Sheridan in the first sketch—he is promptly sent away by Bill after giving the Superfans an honest assessment of the prospect of Mike Ditka single-handedly defeating the Giants.[3]
Subsequent sketches starred George Wendt as Bill's brother Bob, with occasional appearances by Beth Cahill as Bob's daughter Denise. Macaulay Culkin appeared as Tommy Arnold, Pat's young nephew, who played a Pilgrim in a short school program about Thanksgiving, saying that the first Thanksgiving had Indians giving gifts of Polish sausage, in which an Indian (played by Culkin's brother Kieran) predicted the Bears would lead the Detroit Lions 96–14 at the half. John Goodman played Pat Arnold upon Myers's departure from SNL; the change in Pat Arnold's appearance was attributed to "massive weight gain." Mantegna's absence was invariably explained away by Wendt, saying his "brudder Bill" had just "had anudder heart attack." One sketch briefly had Todd's wife wearing a frumpy dress (also played by Chris Farley).
The characters were typically shown in Mike Ditka's sports bar, drinking large amounts of beer, smoking, and gorging themselves on ribs, Polish sausage, and similar foods. All the characters wore dark sunglasses and thick mustaches to resemble Ditka, the Superfans' idol. In addition to discussing Ditka and the Bears, another frequent topic of discussion was the Chicago Bulls and their star player, Michael Jordan, who were winning their first three NBA Championships at the time. Both Ditka and Jordan made appearances (playing themselves) in episodes of the sketch.
SNL alumnus Dan Aykroyd also appeared on the sketch as Todd's cousin, Irwin Mainway, who originated in the "Consumer Probe" and "On the Spot" sketches.
Early sketches had posters in the background with the call letters WBBM, the CBS corporate-owned and -operated TV, AM and FM stations in Chicago, though later sketches changed the call letters to WBCM.
The group would discuss upcoming sporting events and inevitably predict a huge victory for the Chicago team, using an exaggerated Chicago accent—a variety of Inland Northern American English—normally culminating in a uniform toast to "Da Bearss" and "Da Bullss", although "Da Cubss" was heard on at least one occasion, although they seldom talked about ice hockey, or "Da Blackhawks" or made mention of "Da White Sox". Their predictions were likewise exaggerated and their topics of conversation often ludicrous. Typical debates involved Mike Ditka versus a hurricane—in this particular debate, the Superfans believed that Ditka could defeat the hurricane, until it was revealed that the name of the hurricane was Hurricane Ditka, at which point Todd O'Connor had a heart attack out of confusion; who would win in a competition for World Domination—"Da Bearss" or "Da Bullss"; Ditka winning the Indianapolis 500 driving the Bears' team bus; or how many points Jordan could score if he played an entire game by himself while lounging in a recliner.
One episode asked the outcome of the Bulls/Pistons game where Todd said the Bulls would win 402–0—but Jordan would be held to under 200 points. Todd usually predicted shutouts. During the first episode, he predicted that the Bears would defeat the Giants 79–0, claiming that "the Bears' defense is like a wall. You can't go t'rough it." (The Giants won the actual game, 31–3.) Pat once predicted the Bears would win their game by a score of 31 to -7. When asked how a team could end up with negative points, Todd replied, "Ditka'll find a way." One episode featured a Jeopardy!-like game show preempting the Bearless, and therefore unimportant, Super Bowl, starring Bob Swerski as host and the other Superfans as contestants. All the questions dealt with the Bears, Chicago, or Ditka. The Final Jeopardy! question was "Bears vs. Bulls," which produced hilarious responses from the contestants. The correct answer was revealed to be that such a match-up would tear the fabric of the space-time continuum and destroy the planet, meaning the United Nations would have to step in prior to the match to prevent the destruction.
The characters appeared in nine episodes in two years. With Ditka's departure from the Bears in 1993 and significant cast changes on SNL, the sketch and characters all but disappeared. They made a special appearance at the celebration of the Chicago Bulls' 1991–1993 "Three-peat" championship victory. NBC interrupted daytime television to broadcast the short speeches made by the Superfans. Bob Swerski and Carl Wollarski also made a special appearance during Jordan's original jersey retirement ceremony at the United Center in 1994. The final sketch (actually a taped segment narrated by Bill Kurtis, ostensibly a TV documentary piece) featuring the original Superfans was on October 25, 1997, in an episode hosted by Farley. This featured the second appearance by Ditka (he had appeared on an episode of SNL after his firing by the Bears), though he was at the time coaching the New Orleans Saints, which resulted in a schism among the Superfans (Carl had taken up with the Saints, Bob had moved to Jackson, Tennessee—halfway between Chicago and New Orleans—and Todd believed it was 1986, and had a heart attack if told otherwise). Farley's death two months later seemed to preclude the possibility of any future Superfan sketches.