For Bears fans, Super Bowl Sunday will be a grueling exercise in humiliation, a private Hell of shame and frustration featuring iPhone commercials. Adding to this year’s squalor and disappointment is the story of the tragic demise of a true god of Chicago’s robust cosmology. I am speaking of the late Don Cornelius.

As the creator of Soul Train, Don Cornelius enriched generations with his love of music, creativity, and spontaneous self-expression. With his easy-going humor, basso voice, and ABA basketball-sized Afro, the dapper host suavely ushered viewers into a party where racial tensions were exuberantly ignored. Those threatened by the extroverted atmosphere were not resented, but pitied. The message was unambiguous: “This music is for all of us, alike,” it declared. “And Joy is our birthright.” Shit, Goddamn, get off your ass and jam.

In a city still reeling from Fred Hampton, Viet Nam and race riots, it should never have worked. Radios along Rainbow Beach were booming the untelevised revolution of the Last Poets and Gil Scott Heron. So with hortatory grace, Cornelius introduced the Soul Train Scramble, a black self-awareness game providing viewers a chance to contemplate, say, the poetry of Gwendolyn Brooks while listening to the Ohio Player’s Funky Worm.

With hard work and an eye for game-changing talent, Cornelius launched countless careers, including those of the young studio dancers: the bouncing, irrepressible Fred “Rerun” Berry; the wily, exotic Damita Jo Freeman; and in 1973, a smooth college kid from Jackson State named Walter Payton. The clip of Sweetness dancing his way down the Soul Train line is worth watching, if only because, as usual, there’s no one blocking for him.

This Sunday, the Bears will not play in the Super Bowl. The coming rebirth of this once great franchise may be painful and lengthy. But when Madonna takes the stage at half time, I would be surprised if she did not mention Don Cornelius. I hope she does. It would give Chicago something to cheer about.

Last week the Denver Broncos ended the Bears playoff chances as surely as Constantine ended the Diocletian Tetrarchy. As usual, quarterback and outspoken Christian Timothy Tebow gave all praise and glory to his jealous God. But Bears fans can only curse Tebow for removing the binding from their eyes. For now, Bears fans are like the Creator in Genesis chapter 2, observing Adam alone in the garden, naked and ignorant. We see the Bears, and it is not good.

Once we overlooked the flaws of the Bears. But now we see through a glass darkly, and put away the childish notion that a team that plays only two phases of the game can contend. It is futile to blame this loss on the injuries of Jay Cutler and Matt Forte. Far more troubling was the Bears lack of an answer – Caleb Hanie going 2 for 15 on third down, and Marion Barber undermining decent numbers with an astonishing lack of judgment at a crucial moment. Sam Hurd’s recent arrest on federal drug charges only enhances the emerging image of the Bears as leaderless.

But what about our leader? What of Lovie Smith? “Ecce Homo” – “Behold the man” Pilate said to the angry mob – he has committed no crime. But it was Lovie who blew off the man-to-man coverage that limited Tebow to three passes in the first 45 minutes. And it was Lovie who condoned the use of the Cover 2, not once, but three times, on Denver’s final drives. Once the check down passes began, it was if a voice had said, “Let my people throw”.

So now Bears fans, like the worried disciples, ask “What’s the buzz, tell me what’s a-happening?” A new coach? A new offensive co-coordinator? But as Tebow can tell us, “Put not your trust in Princes”. It is easy to mock Tebow’s simplicity, but without a conversion of our own, we may never walk the path that Timothy Tebow is walking toward the playoffs, and perhaps even, the Promised Land.