HBO’s ‘The Shuffle’ Reveals Longtime Connection of Sports and Entertainment

Documentary tells the story behind the 1985 Chicago Bears’ hip-hop music video

A new HBO documentary demonstrates the deeper history of the convergence of sports and entertainment. The Shuffle, which will be released on HBO tomorrow, chronicles creation of the 1985 Chicago Bears’ hip-hop music video of “The Super Bowl Shuffle,” the eponymous song that became a cultural phenomenon serendipitously ahead of the team’s Super Bowl XX championship.

Ten Chicago Bears players performed “The Super Bowl Shuffle,” whose profits were donated to Chicago’s needy families.

The film — “the first in a new series of short football films, made in partnership with NFL Films,” according to a press release from HBO parent Warner Bros. Discovery — explores the video’s conception, execution, and impact. It features behind-the-scenes footage and new interviews with players who performed the song, which was ultimately nominated as “Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals” at the 1987 Grammy Awards.

In the 1970s and ’80s, recording engineer and mixer Fred Breitberg was a regular, working in legendary Chicago studios like Universal Recording, Streeterville Studios, and Curtis Mayfield’s CurTom Studios. His credits center on Chicago’s core blues and R&B artists, including Albert Collins, Koko Taylor, Magic Slim, and Johnny Otis. In December 1985, he was working from a private studio owned by Jovan Perfume CEO Richard Meyer (his company was the first corporate sponsor of a major rock tour, the Rolling Stones’ 1981 Tattoo You tour). The studio had been converted from a bowling alley in Meyer’s mansion.

“As you can imagine, it was pretty opulent,” Breitberg, now 78, says of the studio’s environment.

The Studio Sessions

He recalls that, early in the 1985 NFL season, the idea for the music video came up in a meeting of various studio clients, including locally based Red Label Records, which had a distribution deal with Capitol Records. From there, the narrative became more like an NFL timeline than a typical calendar.

“When the ’85 season came around, a production team that I was involved in suggested that we do a rap record on the Bears,” says Breitberg, who appears in the HBO documentary seated at the console in the city’s VSOP Studio. “By the third week of the season, what they had morphed into ‘Yeah, a rap record on the Bears with the Bears’ because Dick Meyer had a relationship with [Bears wide receiver] Willie Gault. Part of the incentive for the Bears to be involved was a charitable contribution to feed Chicago’s neediest families.”

Meyer presented the idea to Gault and linebacker Mike Singletary, who brought it up to the rest of the team, ultimately recruiting 10 players — several turned the project down, concerned it could jinx their Super Bowl hopes — to rap on the record. By Week 8, Breitberg had recorded the song’s refrain and beat using local studio musicians and vocalists, with lyrics written by Richard E. Meyer and Melvin Owens atop music composed by Bobby Daniels and Lloyd Barry. The athletes were scheduled to record on Thursday of Week 11. Seven of them made it that day to lay down their raps, one by one, through a Neumann U-47 tube-powered microphone and the studio’s Harrison console onto an Ampex A80 MKIII 24-track tape recorder.

Audio engineer Fred Breitberg, who was on hand in 1985, participated in the production of HBO’s The Shuffle.

“When the players came in,” says Breitberg, “they worked with us in the control room to learn their verse. Then, when they were confident, we took them out in the studio and put them in front of the mic. Some of them required one take, some required a couple, but it didn’t take long. It was a Thursday, the week before they beat Dallas. Everybody was having a great time that night.”

The other three players — running back Walter Payton, quarterback Jim McMahon, and defensive lineman Walter “The Refrigerator” Perry — came in on Saturday, when Breitberg also recorded the track’s saxophone solo.

“The next day, while they were beating Dallas, we were in the studio control room, mixing the record and enjoying the game on the TV,” he says, laughing. “We sent it out to be mastered at Capitol on Monday. It was Christmastime, but [the folks at Capitol] were so excited about the record, they actually stopped pressing whatever they were pressing and injected this into the schedule so that they could get it right out. It was out in a week.”

It’s a Hit!

“The Super Bowl Shuffle” was released as a 45-rpm single, followed by a club version. Breitberg’s fiancé was promotion director at hits-radio station WLS Chicago, so he was able to literally walk the record into the program director’s office. It was put on the air almost immediately.

“Nothing has ever been put on the air that fast,” he marvels.

Everything after that also happened quickly. “The Super Bowl Shuffle” became a minor national hit, reaching No. 41 on the Billboard Hot 100. Drive-time DJs had a field day with it, helped by the Bears’ remarkable one-loss season record and then the team’s 46-10 trouncing of the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XX on Jan. 26, 1986. The recording’s crowning achievement was a Grammy nomination, one that lost to Prince’s “Kiss” — unlike the unlucky Pats that year, a worthy opponent.

A few weeks later, the RIAA certified the record’s gold status, for sales of more than 500,000 copies. As had quickly become standard in that MTV era, the record was also accompanied by its own video, whose VHS and Beta versions went platinum with sales of more than 1 million units.

More important, perhaps, more than $300,000 in profits from the song and music video were donated to the Chicago Community Trust to provide clothing, shelter, and food to Chicago families in need. As Payton’s lyric in the song declared, “Now, we’re not doing this because we’re greedy/The Bears are doing it to feed the needy.”

Laying the Groundwork

“The Super Bowl Shuffle” seemed to precipitate similar efforts, though none as novel and fresh: “Baseball Boogie” by the L.A. Dodgers (aka the Baseball Boogie Bunch) in 1986, which included Orel Hershiser, Fernando Valenzuela, and Jerry Reuss; and the truly terrifying “Grabowski Shuffle,” which even its “star,” former Bears/Cowboys/Saints head coach Mike Ditka, later regretted. Fortunately for sports, the concept mostly petered out.

However, Breitberg looks back on the episode as seminal to the now-explosive convergence of sports and entertainment. “What was converged at that point was more like sports and a successful pop musical presentation. Of all these other subsequent records, none resonate with anything outside their fan base. This was a serious record, not only in terms of its production but in terms of how it resonated with the public. None of these other records can claim that.” Among NFL players who have made their own records are Brett Favre, Troy Aikman, Deion Sanders, and Herschel Walker; the Tampa Bay Buccaneers have their own music video; ex-Lakers champion Shaquille O’Neal is a successful rapper who has charted the Billboard Hot 100; and the late Kobe Bryant recorded a rap album.

Breitberg did some stem isolation of some individual tracks in the documentary for demonstration purposes, using AI, but did not completely remix it. Not that that was possible, since the original master multitrack tapes are long gone.

But, he adds, there was no reason to do so. “If you’ve heard it recently on any kind of playback system, you’ll see it is as fresh today as it was then. It stands up.”