Panthers have 'Super Bowl Shuffle' swagger, but not enough to flaunt in this era

Carolina Panthers head coach Ron Rivera played for the 1985 Chicago Bears, a team so dominant that during the season they boldly recorded a rap song, "The Super Bowl Shuffle."

It essentially predicted a championship.

Rivera didn't appear in the video because it was filmed early on the morning the team returned from a game at Miami, which proved to be the only loss of the season. The linebacker skipped it and slept in. Walter Payton, Richard Dent, Williams "Refrigerator" Perry and others made it though.

The entire concept is almost unfathomable these days, an era where sports is so uptight and repressed that the Panthers' dancing after touchdowns was/is a major storyline headed into their Super Bowl 50 matchup with the Denver Broncos.

Even Rivera shakes his head at the concept. He runs an operation that encourages individuals to celebrate their personality, but what would he feel if they did that?

"Dread," Rivera said.

Consider the media and fan firestorm that would greet a team recording a Super Bowl song in the middle of the season, let alone filming the video after a loss, perhaps a defeat that occurred because they were focused on the video, not the game?

"Probably not a good idea," center Ryan Kalil said.

First take. Last rites.

"People would probably go crazy," Carolina defensive end Charles Johnson said. "They go crazy over people dancing and having fun, I can only imagine what they'd do if someone put out a music video."

"I think Twitter would explode," tight end Greg Olsen said. "I think they'd be crushed."

"That took big cojones," defensive tackle Kawann Short said. "The only thing we have going for us is the dab."

And they get ripped for that.

"It's funny," Rivera said. "When 'The Super Bowl Shuffle' came out, it came out after we lost to Miami. And I don't know how much of it was the arrogance or just being confident as to who we were as a football team and how much was we were doing it for charity and it seemed like a fun idea at the time."

"If our guys wanted to do something like that, I'd be concerned about it," Rivera continued.

The Bears coach at the time was the oldest school of them all, Mike Ditka.

"And we know Ditka don't play," Johnson said.

Ditka has said he didn't care because he didn't think anyone would beat the Bears. Singing and dancing didn't seem like a big deal. It was all foolishness.

That was then. Back in the mid and late 1980s, the team rap video became somewhat of a staple.

A couple of New England Patriots, who met the Bears in the Super Bowl, felt compelled to make cameo appearances in the their own song "New England, The Patriots, And We." It was an utterly horrible tune – "we'll hang the Bears from the liberty tree" – that served as a deserving soundtrack to the ensuing 46-10 beatdown in Super Bowl XX.

Chicago wasn't the only team that made a video during the 1985 regular season. The Seattle Seahawks recorded the rhythm-and-blues-inspired "Cuz the Blue Wave is on a Roll." They went 8-8.

In 1986 both the Los Angeles Raiders and Rams recorded videos. Neither did much. In fairness, "Let's Ram It" was oddly catchy, if only because it's so full of double entendre lines that if released today it would likely prompt a class-action law suit from the team's cheerleaders and cause the NFL to send the entire organization to sensitivity training.

Back then, it seemed like a good idea. The music went on from there. Needless to say, the 1980s were a weird time.

"I'm kind of glad that trend died out," Short said.

At least the Bears backed it up. And the song wasn't that bad, reaching No. 41 on the Billboard charts and being nominated for a Grammy for best R&B performance by a duo or group.

"There was a lot of great production value on that," Kalil said. "It wasn't like it was done on some smart phone. They had a full-on stage and lighting."

The Panthers are one of the loosest teams in recent memory. They've been criticized for bringing a baseball bat out on the field, endlessly celebrating touchdowns and taking team victory photos on the sideline while games are still going on.

They are 17-1. None of the current players said they would appear in a Super Bowl music video, let alone midseason, let alone after a loss, but there was some appreciation for what those old Bears were about.

"You only get a ripping if you don't win the whole thing," Kalil said. "The fact is, they stuck by it."

"You better win it," Olsen said. "I guess the question is, if that team goes on to win it, they're confident, they stepped up to the challenge, they are everything. If they lose, they are every negative you can think of."

That may be the fate of the Panthers, too. Rivera is willing to deal with it. Maybe it's those old Bears days still coming through but he encourages his guys to have fun, to be themselves, to play loose … as long as, like that 1985 team, they took care of business.

"You really do try to eliminate the distractions, and things only become distractions if people talk about it in a certain fashion," Rivera said. "So what we've tried to do is embrace certain situations and make it ours. Anytime someone wants to talk about something in a different fashion than what we are doing, we just try to end it and say, this is the way we are, we are going to move on.

"To me, that eliminates it," Rivera continued. "If you fight it, then it becomes a distraction. If it's constantly talked about it becomes a distraction. We stick true to who we are."

Shuffle along then.