This site is not affiliated with, nor endorsed or recognized by the NFL or the Chicago Bears. It has been carefully and thoughtfully created by a Chicago Bears fan of 26 years and counting out of pure love for the subject matter. As Daily Herald reporter Robert Sanchez quoted in his December 2004 article on me, it was always a dream of mine to work for the Chicago Bears. Although I have not hidden behind this website and have made the organization aware of my efforts, "no one from Halas Hall has called," as Sanchez said. I have fun with this site, am happy that I assist other fans in their research on Chicago Bears history, and proud to say there is more information on this little site about the Chicago Bears than in any official team or league publication or website.

My father took me to my first Bears game at Soldier Field on September 30th, 1979, and again later that year to see the improbable 42-6 Bear victory over St. Louis on December 16th. My father then took me to each home game in 1980, then secured season tickets starting with the 1981 season. I relished the 1985 season more than legions of new Bear fans that were incarnated that year, as I had intently watched the team lose more than win over those past six seasons.

Late in high school through my college years at Illinois State, I paid more attention to studies and socializing than reading every written word about the team. I did get home to every game I could and made sure I had slept most of my Saturday night hangover off in time to see the Noon game on Sunday.

The Bears were burned back into my consciousness in January 1993, when my normally stone-faced father wept as his favorite Bear of all time, Michael Keller Ditka, was fired. Though he gave plenty of thought to cancelling his season tickets, thankfully he kept them to turn over to me in 1999. Sadly, he refused to return to Soldier Field until 1998 and remains to this day a lukewarm Bears fan, after being known as the biggest fan in little Plainfield, IL for many years.

After college in the early 90's I began to again consume all the knowledge I could on the Bears, despite their decade-long fall from grace. This cemented my feeling that good or bad, everything was still interesting from a historical perspective. I began surfing the Internet in 1997 and wondered what I could find on some of my favorite players: Walter Payton, Brian Piccolo, Neal Anderson, Mike Ditka. Answer: not much. I knew nothing about HTML or web design or really how a PC worked at the time, but downloaded an AOL web page generator anyway. I dropped a photo of Neal Anderson onto a gray background, named the page "Roy's Bears Page" and dreamed of what might be.

Looking to bolster my bachelor's degree in Public Relations, I enrolled in technology courses at Illinois Institute of Technology in the late 1990's, eventually finishing my Master's degree in Information Technology and Management in May 2005. The original Chicago Bears History website was created as a class project in 2000. The redeveloped site you're now looking at has been carefully redesigned over a period of eight months utilizing ASP.net, learned in one of my courses at IIT. All this in addition to maintaining a full-time career and trying to see a wife and son when possible.

Additionally, I always thought I could write a pretty detailed book on Bears History, and Arcadia Publishing gave me the chance to do so in 2004.

Enjoy.

Read a little information about Roy Taylor.

No, I am not affiliated with the organization in any way and have no ability to do that.

I have access to the Chicago Bears' and NFL's published all-time rosters and would be happy to look up that person's name for you. These all-time rosters probably do not cover every man that ever tried out or participated in training camp, however, so my information isn't necessarily written in stone. I do not have a team photo or player photos for every season or player in history, sorry.

I can only feature rosters on the site from 1979 to the present, as I wasn't watching the team prior to that time. I'm only writing about information I can vouch for by having seen it. The rosters aren't an official start-of or end-of year roster from the Bears, but reflect players that may have been on the team but on injured reserve or were cut by the end of the season. For example, wide receivers Brian Baschnagel, Brad Anderson and James Manness were not on the Bears active roster in January 1986, but were on the roster at some point that season, so I'm including them at my discretion.

This is my hobby and a place to hone my technical skills. This is a not-for-profit site. I will be offering nominally priced advertising for businesses, but this is only to cover my web hosting costs so I can continue to serve a growing visitor base. And I think I'm a pretty damn good resource for Bears historical information and I like being the repository.

No, and I'm not representing that I have. I've tried to reach out to great Bears photographers and have permission to use some of their work. You will find links to their great work on my links page. I am freely using photos dated prior to 1954, because my research shows that those photos are now in the public domain. I have been very careful to not use any Chicago Bears or NFL logos, and am not using any photos scanned from official Chicago Bears publications. If you are a website that sells Chicago Bears historical photos online, be assured I am not using any of your work on this site. The reason I have stamped most photos with my URL is not to represent that the image is mine, but to try to deter people linking directly to my photos.

No. But if you'd like to buy an ad you can do that, or advertise on my site via Google AdSense.

I apologize but I couldn't possibly make copies for everyone that asks. I do not sell this copyrighted material. There are others that are risking their freedom by doing so if you search online.

Nick Howard of Bantix Technologies. Nick taught my ASP.net class at IIT in addition to running his consulting firm. He was very enthusiastic about this site, being a Bears fan himself. I designed and coded the site but Nick shared a very key .DLL that eased the managability of my code. He also has been willing to assist me with questions at home even though I'm no longer his student. For that I have tremendous gratitude for his kindness. All the faculty and staff at IIT that latched on to my story and helped promote my work. Roger Hacker of the Chicago Bears Media Relations department, for being a cool guy and respecting what I do here, from his perspective anyway. To my parents for all the sacrifices they made raising and educating me, and my wife Michelle for sacrificing countless hours to this.