RIP Ditka

Jim Nantz says Mike Ditka used to pay and tip for everything with $100 bills, and never ask for change

“I noticed early on that all he carried were $100 bills. All he did was peel off hundreds all the time. Buy a beer at the bar on the way out to dinner, ‘Yeah, give me a Budweiser.’ $100. Keep the change.”

“Coat check, comes into a restaurant, comes out, $100. Man on the street, homeless, there was one guy that kind of understood the routine and he was there every week. Mike, every time, $100 bill.”

“I finally got up the nerve to say, ‘Hey coach, why don’t you ever get change? Why just the hundreds?’ He says, ‘Hey, what’s the difference anyway?’”

“He said, ‘You know, the way I look at it, when I die and they drop me down into the ground, I hope there’s a little opening in that coffin and my last $100 bill comes flying out and goes up into the sky and drifts away. That would make me happy.’”

“So I said, ‘This gets a little pricey, doesn’t it?’ ‘It’s not that bad, Jim.’ He said, ‘Here’s the way I rationalize it in my head. We got 20 weeks. I come every single Friday to New York. I come in with 50 $100 bills, $5,000. And at the end of the season, I’m spending $100,000.’”

“He would say, ‘I’ve allocated $100,000 to the football season to go enjoy myself in New York. And that’s the way it is.’ I take $5,000 in cash in hundreds every single week. And that’s what he did.”

Click to expand...