Long before NFL players boasted carefully curated media brands or overly choreographed end-zone dances, the 1985 Chicago Bears threw down the gauntlet: they recorded a full-blown rap song and music video they dubbed “The Super Bowl Shuffle.” Meant as a lighthearted charity project—and recorded seven weeks before clinching Super Bowl XX—the song became a subject of both scorn and celebration. With linemen rapping, receivers shimmying and a beat that has survived four decades of good-natured ribbing, the song became a cultural artifact as memorable as the Bears’ dominant Super Bowl run itself.
When the 1985 Chicago Bears dropped “The Super Bowl Shuffle,” the timing was equal parts audacious and premature—the NFL playoffs had not even begun, and the team had just suffered a bitter loss to the Miami Dolphins the night before the song’s recording. Yet the mix of bravado, charity ambition and pure Chicago grit transformed the song and accompanying music video—recorded at none other than Lincoln Park nightclub Park West—into something that transcended football. That story is now retold in the new documentary The Shuffle, which premiered last week on HBO Max.
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The Shuffle was directed by longtime football documentarian Jeff Cameron, whose previous works include Hard Knocks: Training Camp, a deep dive into the NFL’s grueling training camps, and Bye Bye Barry, a portrait of former Detroit Lion Barry Sanders, who hung up his cleats on the verge of shattering the NFL all-time rushing record. Clocking in at 40 minutes, The Shuffle revisits how the Bears aligned their swagger with a charitable impulse: Proceeds from the song benefitted the Chicago Community Trust, a local charity that fights hunger and poverty to this day.
Featuring original footage, candid interviews with former team stars like Willie Gault, Mike Singletary and Gary Fencikt and behind-the-scenes stories of the song’s rehearsals, lip synchs and choreography, The Shuffle captures both the absurdity and the charm of a moment when football, rap and Chicago culture collided head-on.
By reviving that strange, exuberant speck of sports history, the documentary doesn’t just celebrate a seemingly goofy song—it celebrates a city’s identity, a team’s confidence (and occasional cockiness) and a moment in time when even legends weren’t above dancing for a cause.
