Bears

George Halas ran the operation almost single-handedly from the start: player, coach, owner. The club he and Edward "Dutch" Sternaman founded on 17 September 1920 carried the company's name until the move to Chicago a year later, and in 1922, sharing Wrigley Field with the baseball Cubs, Halas settled on Bears — his own logic being that a football team ought to outweigh a baseball one.

The nickname that stuck harder than the name itself, Monsters of the Midway, actually belonged first to the University of Chicago's college team; the Bears inherited it once their own championship run made it fit better. That run was considerable: eight NFL titles before the Super Bowl era existed, including the 73–0 demolition of the Washington Redskins in the 1940 championship game, still the largest margin in the sport's championship history. The ninth title came in 1985, when Mike Ditka's team went 15–1 and beat the New England Patriots 46–10 in Super Bowl XX — the season that gave Chicago its "Da Bears" shorthand.

Walter Payton, Dick Butkus, Gale Sayers, Sid Luckman: the roll call is long enough that the Bears have sent more players to the Pro Football Hall of Fame than any other franchise, and retired fourteen numbers, also a league high. The rivalry with the Green Bay Packers goes back to 1921 and is the oldest in the NFL.