Green Bay clapped for Mike Ditka, who beat them fifteen times

Packers fans have spent a century perfecting their opinion of the Chicago Bears, and Mike Ditka gave them plenty to work with. The Chicago Sun-Times remembers him as "a vocal antagonist who went 15-5 against the Packers as head coach." So something odd happened at Lambeau Field on Sunday, October 11, two days after Ditka died at 86. Bears fans came in No. 89 jerseys, and one of them, Ryan Tousley, squeezed into a sweater vest he'd bought twenty years earlier. "It's very clear it doesn't fit," he said, "but I had to pay homage to him." The announcer asked for a moment of silence, the crowd kept it, and then Green Bay started clapping.

Proverbs, a book of plain sayings about how people live with each other, has the old line about iron for this. Nobody gets sharp against a pillow. Green Bay was a tougher team for having Ditka across the field, and the Packers' statement called him "a formidable opponent." But the proverb's word for the man on the other side is friend.

With Ditka, the rival really did become one.

In 2007 Packers great Jerry Kramer started raising money for retired players who had gone broke, and Ditka worked alongside him. From 2008 Ditka chaired the Gridiron Greats Assistance Fund, which pays for housing and medical care. So a Packer and a Bear spent their old age looking after men the game had used up. One was Mike Webster, a Steelers center with four Super Bowl rings who at times lived in his truck. He died in 2002 at 50, the first former player diagnosed with CTE, before the fund existed, so the help went to his family. After Ditka's death, Webster's son Garrett wrote: "Coach and @Gridiron_Greats helped get my sister in rehab, saved our family from eviction, and gave us hope and friends when we had none." Then: "I hope he is having a beer with dad up there."

None of this makes Ditka a saint. He had a DUI conviction, a long feud with his own defensive coordinator, Buddy Ryan, and a Super Bowl touchdown he handed to William Perry instead of Walter Payton. "I know he lived to regret that," broadcaster Chris Berman said. Ditka, a former altar boy, once put his rule simply: "You gotta own up to what you do."

Lambeau clapped for the rival who made its team harder to beat, and Kramer had found in that same rival a partner. That's the gift of a good rival: while the games last he makes you better, and when they're over he can be the friend who helps you carry the men the game left behind.