Mike Ditka Is Angry About The Walter Payton Book He Hasn't Read

I'd bet all the money in my pockets against all the money in yours that Mike Ditka hasn't read Jeff Pearlman's revelatory biography of Walter Payton, which was excerpted in this week's and which has the Chicago media scurrying to find any old Bear willing to glower at a book he hasn't read either. (Quick! Someone get Maury Buford on the horn!)

First, here's what Ditka said of Pearlman:

"I'd spit on him," the coach said in an exclusive interview with NBC Chicago. "I have no respect for him."

And then he took to the radio:

"If you're going to wait 12 years after somebody's passed, come on. This is the sign of a gutless individual who would do this. Totally gutless who would hide behind that, and that's what he's done."

So this is how your "controversy" gets made: someone who (I'm guessing) hasn't read the book, asking someone who hasn't read the book either for his response to the book neither has read. God, what a country.

Oh, and pictured above: the author, in hiding.

Ditka Would Spit on Payton Author [NBC Chicago] Mike Ditka doubts Walter Payton book [ESPN]