Doug Buffone obit

Doug Buffone, longtime linebacker for NFL's Chicago Bears, dies

He was not on the list.

One day when the Bears played at Wrigley Field, linebacker Dick Butkus kept yelling at teammate Doug Buffone that his shoes stunk.

The louder Butkus yelled, the more Buffone insisted they didn't. Butkus rode his buddy so hard about the smell that eventually Buffone threw the shoes away. But the stench remained. Buffone later laughed recalling how the real source of the odor was a dead rat they found in his locker buried beneath his stuff.

Then there was the time Buffone, a Bears linebacker from 1966 to 1979, found himself at the feet of Packers coach Vince Lombardi. Buffone loved telling people how Lombardi, a fellow member of the Italian-American Hall of Fame, taunted him by yelling buffone, the Italian word for clown.

What about the time Buffone walked out of the Bears hotel wearing only his underwear and smoking a cigar at 3 a.m. in Green Bay after somebody pulled the fire alarm hours before kickoff? Or the way Buffone cackled recounting Butkus once calling a timeout in the final minute of a blowout just so he could take another shot at Lions center Ed Flanagan?

What was the funniest story you remember Buffone telling on the radio or at a restaurant after he met you for five minutes?

Everybody who knew Buffone has one, told in a tone like your favorite uncle's. Every one of us feels a deep sense of loss today. Of all the blows Buffone delivered as a Bears linebacker for 186 games wearing No. 55, the toughest came Monday afternoon when news spread about his death at 70.

One generation of Chicagoans mourns the passing of one of the franchise's most dependable linebackers, a standout on some sorry teams who always was the league leader in effort and intensity. Nothing Buffone did as an NFL linebacker brought him more pride than playing hard through tough times and injury.

"When the game was over, Doug said he would always ask himself: Did I do my job?'' said longtime broadcaster Chet Coppock, who recently collaborated on a book with Buffone. "If he answered yes, he could live with himself.''

Yet another generation, a younger one, will miss the guy who appeared on WSCR-AM 670 after Bears games to express the passion they were feeling whether it was good, bad or ugly. When Ron Gleason, now the programming director at WBBM radio, first paired Buffone with former Bear Ed O'Bradovich shortly after Buffone joined the Score in 1992, never did Gleason imagine the appeal they would create for Bears fans who looked forward to their weekly venting sessions. Yet Gleason sensed immediately the "Doug and OB" show offered something unique.

"It was magic from the beginning,'' recalled Gleason, WSCR's programming director at the time. "They brought so much emotion. Nobody cared more about what happened than Doug.''

As Buffone might have said once or a hundred times, he harshly criticized the Bears because, beneath the bluster, he deeply loved the franchise that drafted him out of Louisville in the fourth round of the 1966 NFL draft. That came through in every conversation, such as an appearance last fall on "Mully and Hanley,'' after the Bears were blown out in successive weeks by the Patriots and the Packers. With trademark Buffone bluntness, he blurted out: "They're losers!''

"It broke his heart to say it,'' said Mike Mulligan, a WSCR host who worked with Buffone for 15 years. "But the truth always came out of his mouth. He had candor and it was no act.''

If the late Ron Santo was beloved in the city for always putting a positive spin on the Cubs, Buffone built his popularity on the basis of brutal honesty analyzing his beloved Bears. People who listened to Buffone appreciated the no-holds-barred approach. People who worked with Buffone — as I was fortunate to do at WSCR — respected the reams of yellow pads he filled with research that reflected how serious he took his job. As a player or broadcaster, peers agreed nobody prepared more than Buffone. As a guy with every reason to act like a celebrity, nobody connected more naturally with the common man. The small-town son of a coal miner from Yatesboro, Pa., (pop. 500) never let the big city change him.

"When I met Doug in 1963, he didn't know what indoor plumbing was,'' said Al MacFarlane, Buffone's college roommate at Louisville and business partner. "The first thing he did with his signing bonus was build his parents a house. What a guy. ... I can hardly even call my friends without crying. I'm so shocked and sad.''

A football city grieves with him. But if sadness starts to outweigh joy remembering Buffone, as he liked to say, stop yourself. Buffone would want to leave us laughing, as he so often did.