Bears-Packers matchup needs civility

The subject of civility moved to the forefront of politics this month, and it wouldn't hurt if it spilled into sports this week.

The NFC championship game between the Bears and the Packers on Sunday is a good place to start, so everybody just check your nuclear weapons at the door.

Nobody likes to look down at people up in Wisconsin more than I do, but it's always meant in the context of siblings picking at each other.

This matchup this week is so cool that it would be a shame to overheat it, so I pledge to restrict my rhetoric to “dislike” instead of “hate,” “rival” instead of “enemy” and “game” instead of “war”?

Civility might be asking too much of Bears and Packers fans with the media stoking the fires.

Plus, it's sort of inherent in some fans to be belligerent and incumbent upon a few of those — usually ones fueled by alcohol — to perpetrate mayhem on otherwise innocent exercises.

Consider this from Wikipedia: “Violence by supporters of sports teams dates back to Roman times, when supporters of chariot racing teams were frequently involved in major riots.”

Not much has changed over the centuries. Rivalries still inflame passions.

Or as this headline in the Toronto Sun put it last year, “Sports rivalries: When hating another human being is standard behavior.”

That wasn't even in reference to hockey, Canada's national insanity. It was over a Canadian Football League game between the Toronto Argonauts and Hamilton Tiger-Cats.

Aren't our neighbors to the north — Canada, not Wisconsin — supposed to be a kinder, gentler sports species?

Anyway, a couple of years ago in New Hampshire a woman drove her car through a parking lot and slammed into a group of people on the street.

A newspaper headline read, “(Red) Sox-Yankees rivalry cited in N.H. fatality.”

Last month outside a football stadium a dozen fans engaged in a fight that resulted in injuries and arrests.

A headline read, “2 stabbed in Rose Bowl brawl before USC-UCLA game.”

Just recently around here a man was sentenced to prison time for kicking another man in the face at a child's birthday party in Huntley.

A headline read, “3-year sentence for blinding man in Cubs-Sox fight.”

Red Sox-Yankees, USC-UCLA, Cubs-White Sox … Bears-Packers?

Let's hope not. Let's hope that Bears and Packers fans, of all rivals, will treat this first playoff game between the teams in 70 years as a reason for fun rather than fighting.

Remember, it's just football, nothing more and nothing less. If conducted properly on and off the field, everybody gets to go to work the next day and boast that they experienced a really special event.

Down here we can make fun of cheese and up there they can dis deep-dish pizza. We can sing songs about bloated Wisconsin women and they can point to bloated Chicago crime statistics. We can tell cow jokes and they can laugh at our politicians.

None of it is off limits if accompanied by a wink and a smile instead of a fist and a frown.

Unless we're talking about European soccer, sports hooliganism generally is isolated to a few isolated moments.

But if one of the few occurs in Soldier Field on Sunday, a historic event could become a monumental eyesore.

Please, everyone, civility now, civility now, civility now.

mimrem@dailyherald.com