Bears

Soldier Field has held only one previous tenant since 1971 — the Bears moved there from Wrigley Field, where they had played from 1921 onward.

The franchise started in Decatur, Illinois, on 20 September 1919 as a works team for the A. E. Staley starch company, joined the NFL as a charter member the following year, and only became Chicago's own once the company sold the operation on and George Halas took it to the city in 1921. The Bears name followed in 1922. Halas stayed on as owner, coach and player long enough to shape the club's identity for decades, and his family has held it since.

Monsters of the Midway, the nickname that stuck, traces to the run of championships in the early 1940s, capped by the 1943 title. The 1940 title game against Washington ended 73–10 — still the most one-sided result in the sport's championship history — and a 1932 playoff forced indoors by weather at Chicago Stadium prompted the league to formalise its post-season altogether. Of the club's nine championships, eight came before the Super Bowl era; the ninth, in 1985, arrived with a 46–10 rout of the Patriots that has defined the franchise's modern image since.

No NFL club has sent more people to the Pro Football Hall of Fame — 37 in all, a group that includes Walter Payton, Dick Butkus and Red Grange among others. The oldest fixture on the calendar remains Green Bay, contested every year since 1921, ahead of the newer rivalries with Minnesota and Detroit. The Bears now play out of Soldier Field.