Windy City bluster

Where once Sosa reigned, Urlacher finds the best of times

This is a tale of two Chicago superstars.

The baseball superstar, Sammy Sosa, is bigger than life. He hits home runs nearly the length of two football fields. He helped revitalize his sport in 1998, along with Mark McGwire, with a scintillating home run chase. Sosa travels with an entourage. He has a bunch of hangers-on clogging the Cubs clubhouse at home and on the road. At one point this year, critical of his team's travel safety precautions, Sosa split from the team on the road to take a charter from city to city. Now he has said he may not want to stay with the Cubs because they aren't competitive. He said this even though he has a contract with Chicago that lasts three more years.

The football superstar, Brian Urlacher, has helped make the Bears Da Bears again. They're the Monsters of the Midway because of his intensity, his playmaking from sideline to sideline, and the fact that even when teams isolate on Urlacher, they can't seem to stop him. He is 24. And his appeal stretches from coast to coast. According to NFL Properties, his jersey -- the jersey of a middle linebacker, not a quarterback or running back or wideout -- is the hottest-selling jersey in America right now. Hotter, even, than Super Bowl MVP (and major hunk, according to my daughter) Tom Brady and young Falcons star-in-the-making Mike Vick, who are second and third.

Maybe the story of Sosa and Urlacher is the story of the difference between baseball and football right now. The baseball star seems pampered, spoiled, pumped-up and too rich for his own good. The football star -- not all, but certainly some -- seems more in control of his own persona, and much less carried away with himself.

One Chicagoan traveling with the Bears last weekend told me: "Right now, as crazy as it may seem, Urlacher's more popular than Sosa in Chicago. You can't get more popular than Urlacher is right now."

Last weekend, I asked Urlacher about being one of the hottest guys in the marketing-mad NFL. "It's awesome. It's unbelievable, really," he said. "It's a team game. It's a little embarrassing to be singled out like that. Really, I think it's the fact that people all over the country love us."

I asked Urlacher how it felt to be compared to Dick Butkus and Mike Singletary, his predecessors as great Chicago middle 'backers. "That could change," he said. "I could start playing like crap. Who knows? But it's amazing to be even thought of in the same sentence as those guys."

I asked him what he thought of all the fame that swirled around him. "I'm not a cocky guy. Really, I'm a regular guy, except I play football for a living."

Since Lawrence Taylor left football nearly a decade ago, everyone's been looking for the next LT. This guy's it. That's a lot to say, but it's true. Urlacher's fast, he's relentless, he's brutally strong, and he lives to drive the quarterback into the ground.

Plus, he's a pretty good guy. That should count for something.

Sports Illustrated senior writer Peter King covers the NFL beat for the magazine and is a regular contributor to CNNSI.com. Check out his Monday Morning Quarterback column every -- and you should see this coming -- Monday morning.

 

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