I dished out major coin again this fall for the DirecTV brilliance that is NFL Sunday Ticket. I get every game, I get any game that is in HD, in HD. I get channels where I can watch eight games at once. I get stat overlays for every game so I can see how many yards LaDanian Tomlinson has and how many strokes Marty Schottenheimer has had in the first half. There’s a plethora of football to digest every Sunday. But the current edition of the Chicago Bears have basically rendered this useless, at least for three hours every Sunday.

All of the games are at my disposal, yet I only watch one when the Bears are on. Oh, sure I’ll hunt around during commercials, but yesterday, like the Sunday afternoons before it, no matter the score, when the Bears are on, my Sony is tuned only to them. 33-0? Still on the Bears. 40-0? Still on the Bears.

Why? Because over the years we’ve seen some excellent Bears teams. But it’s been a long time since we’ve seen anything like this. I don’t want to miss any of it. We, better than any fanbase in the league know that greatness needs to be savored, because it doesn’t last, no matter how often you try to relive it.

And make no mistake. These Bears are great.

They’re not just beating other teams, they’re annihilating them. Early in games, they pick you up, shake you until your will falls out, then they spend the rest of the game teasing you with it and then tearing it to bits and burying it under Soldier Field.

We keep waiting for them to come back to earth. Nobody can be this good. Not in this era of parity in the NFL. As good as the Patriots were during their dynastic enterprise over the past few seasons, they were never this good. So we watch, and we enjoy, but all the while we wait for reality to smack us across the face. We wait for the defense to crack and give up 20 points in a half. We wait for the offense to revert back to run for two yards, throw an incompletion, complete a three yard pass and punt.

We have visions of Steve Smith running alone through the secondary in our heads. We’re sick people, and we just can’t shake an inherent amount of pessimism. So every Sunday the Bears trot out and raise the bar, and they jump over it. And we love it, and we let ourselves believe. Then we question that belief and it starts all over.

Can you blame us? The 1985 Bears are widely acknowledged as the greatest team in the long and storied history of the NFL. Yet they were a one title team. They teased us for a couple of years, then fell off. Had they won another, we’d have spent the last 20 years trying to decide which team was better. When they never did, it left us with a unanimous decision. The 1985 Bears were great, we all know that, but their legend grows with every passing season. It dwarfs anything any current Bears team can do. It keeps us from being convinced that the 2006 Bears are just as good.

That’s fair, though. The current Bears haven’t done anything yet. They’re 5-0. That’s great. It’s exciting. But it’s a long way from 18-1 and a Super Bowl trophy.

But every week they make the case. In week one, they went into Lambeau and continued their lease with an option to buy. Week two they humiliated the Lions. Week three they looked vulnerable, but they needed the ball back at the end, and the defense got it, then Rex drove the team to the win. Last week they played the NFC champs and smacked them silly. If there ever was a time for a letdown, it was yesterday against their old coach, after that huge win over Seattle. The Bills never stood a chance.

With the game well in hand, I sat there, frozen. Not unable to change the channel, just no interested. What, on any other channel, could be as entertaining as watching the Bears run roughshod over the NFL? Our Bears. The best the NFL has to offer. That’s hard to turn away from.

An interesting development continues to happen week to week. Every week the Bears get a new set of announcers (well, since the dream team of Sam Rosen and Tim Ryan did weeks one and two) and every week the game starts with the announcers not sounding convinced that the Bears are really that good. Every week, over the course of the game, you hear the announcers become convinced.

Against the Vikings, Dick Stockton, Moose Johnston and Tony Siragusa took almost four full quarters to be convinced. Yet, they were.

Last week, it only took Al Michaels and John Madden about a quarter and a half.

Yesterday? Phil Simms has taken dumps that took longer than the Bears needed to stamp themselves as dominant in his eyes.

If you wanted a reason to feel bad yesterday, CBS unintentionally gave you one, over and over. The Bears were doing everything right. They have the best defense in the world. Their special teams are among the best and their offense finally has some balls. The Bears would do something great and they’d show them celebrate, then, they’d do the traditional “cut to the opposing head coach” and you’d see Dick Jauron, looking as though he’d just taken a Michael Barretesque foul ball off his crotch.

Dick Jauron, a guy we all liked. A coach who understood, like Mike Ditka had, how important the Bears were to Chicago. To Dick, Green Bay wasn’t just another game. Playing the game hard and right was important. In the end, he lacked the ability to launch mediocre assistant coaches and the Bears were unable to sustain any momentum they got from a great 2001 regular season. Working under a general manager who didn’t hire him, you knew it was only a matter of time before Dick needed to find another job. But it was the rare instance in Chicago sports when a coach was fired, and the fans knew it was necessary, but they didn’t relish it. Nobody wished ill of Dick Jauron on his way out of town. So yesterday, every time CBS showed him, and you felt a little bit for him. He’s doing a nice job in Buffalo, and he’s a big boy, he doesn’t need, or want anybody to feel sorry for him. But you know it had to suck to see a team he helped turn around from the disastrous Dave Wannstedt era, reach heights it never would have if he’d stayed.

The Bears needed to make a move, and they did. Lovie Smith has turned out to be the perfect hire for the franchise. His greatest move was to do something Jauron didn’t have in him. After his first season, the Bears’ offense was pitiful. Lovie launched an overmatched offensive coordinator, Terry Shea, and brought in former Illinois head coach, and former Bears offensive coordinator Ron Turner.

The Bears offense we’ve seen for five straight wins now, is still a mirage to us. Do they really throw down field that much? Do they really have a quarterback who has an actual arm and that elusive thing called accuracy? Do they really have a wide receiver who’s actually faster than the guys chasing him?

They do?

None of us expected them to actually lose to Buffalo yesterday. But did anybody think they’d score the game’s first 40 points? In the NFL there are no Texas-North Texas matchups. You don’t ever consistently throttle other NFL teams. Yet the Bears do it every week.

If they did it every week for three years, it would never get old. Let’s give that a shot! OK, never mind.

From the time the Bills went offsides on a fourth and a foot, then faked a punt that went now where, until the final drive of the game, the Bears did whatever they wanted. If Rex felt like throwing deep, he did. If Thomas Jones decided it was time to rush for 100 yards, he did. If the defense got tired of hammering the Bills and wanted the ball, they took it.

Walleye Ogunleye had a sore hamstring, so the Bears gave him the week off. His replacements had two sacks, a forced fumble and a fumble recovery.

Alex Brown intercepted a pass, fell down, got up and put a Gayle Sayers hip shake on two Bills for an extra five yards. Ricky Manning continued to beat quarterbacks like they took their laptop to Denny’s. Devin Hester caught the punts he should, and let the others go. Rex made great reads and put passes right on guys. Twice he made the wrong reads, and twice Rashied Davis caught it anyway, once for a touchdown, once when he sprinted for a deflected pass while the Bills were standing around watching it go.

Robbie Gould has decided he’d just as soon not miss a kick, and no matter how many times CBS wanted to show it, his third quarter field goal looked good every time.

Brad Maynard got so bored that Lovie let him punt with 15 seconds in the half, with the ball in Buffalo territory. In fact, there was a chance that Maynard wouldn’t be able to go, and Gould had been practicing his punting. The Bears’ offense apparently decided that if Maynard couldn’t punt, they just wouldn’t give him any need to.

Cedric Benson ran like the guy the Bears drafted out of Texas. One touchdown drive consisted solely of five handoffs to Cedric. He scored again later, and only a botched handoff between Brian Griese and Benson gave the Bills any shot at saving face and avoiding a 40-0 smackdown.

Sundays don’t come much better than this one. The Bears won’t play the next two Sundays. Next Monday they’re in Arizona, and the week after is their bye. So I’ll get to enjoy Sunday Ticket. But I won’t enjoy it as much as I do watching every minute of the glorious restoration of Chicago Bears football.

St. Louis 23, Green Bay 20
Remember when the Packers were unbeatable at Lambeau?  Yeah, that’s not so much anymore, is it?  This time, the tepid St. Louis Rams came to town, led pretty much the whole game and waited for Brett Farvuhruh to throw a game-clinching interception.  But he didn’t.  Instead he decided to fumble when he’d driven the Packers to the Rams’ 11 on their last possession.  You have to admire his versatility.

Indianapolis 14, Tennessee 13
The spread on this game was 18.5.  The winless Titans led for most of the game.  The Colts are 5-0.  I’m just going to keep giving you one line facts until I completely run of interest in this game.  Wait, that’s it.

Minnesota 26, Detroit 17
Detroit led this one 17-3 at the start of the fourth quarter.  The Vikings then scored a touchdown, recovered a fumble in the end zone, kicked a field goal and returned an interception for a touchdown.  You almost have to try to suck as bad as Detroit is right now.

New England 20, Miami 10
How sad is it to be a Dolphins fan right now?  Last year, Miami overachieved and expectations were sky high.  Then, free agency started and they were going to sign Drew Brees.  Instead, Daunte Culpepper got dangled on the trade market (even though his knee was in 14 pieces and he’d sucked without Randy Moss in the games he did play in last year).  They traded for Daunte, and things went so bad, so fast, that fans were actually happy when Joey Harrington got a start yesterday to “rest” Daunte.  When you’re hoping for Joey, things are bad.

New Orleans 24, Tampa Bay 21
So far, the non-Bears related moment of 2006 has to be one from this game.  With less than five minutes left in the game, Tampa is backed up deep in their own territory leading 21-17.  They have to punt, and because they’re deep, they’re going to have to punt it to Reggie Bush.  Reggie stands about 50 yards from the line of scrimmage waving his arms to fire up the SuperDome crowd.  He catches the punt moving forward, jukes and gets behind a wall of Saints, he’s going to bust it for a touchdown.  The SuperDome crowd goes nuts.  Then, a flag is thrown.  The crowd begins to hush even as Reggie reaches the end zone to celebrate.  Fox shows the flag lying on the ground, 40 yards away from where Reggie caught the punt, and on the opposite side of the field.  The Saints are crushed, and so is the crowd.  Reggie has a look of disbelief on his face.  The referee turns on his mic and says, “We have a 15-yard penalty for…a facemask… … …on the kicking team.  The result of the play is a touchdown!”  The crowd goes nuts.  It was one of the coolest and most surreal scenes you’ll ever see at an NFL game.  The Saints are doing it with smoke and mirrors, but they’re doing it.  And it’s kind of fun to watch.

New York Giants 19, Washington 3
This is why people lose lots of money gambling on the NFL.  Washington played a red-hot Jacksonville team last week and should have gotten blown out, but instead won in overtime.  They took on a bad Giants team and got their brains beaten in all day.  Remember how tired Joe Gibbs looked at the end of the Jacksonville game?  He was sweating embalming fluid yesterday.

Carolina 20, Cleveland 12
The one team that all Bears’ fans fear has yet to play well in 2006, yet they’re 3-2 now.  Last week we rooted for a season ending injury to Steve Smith that turned out to just be a leg bruise.  Next week we’re rooting for a bus crash.

Kansas City 23, Arizona 20
While everyone was excited about Matt Leinart’s starting debut (and he did play well), did anybody notice that Damon Huard threw for 288 yards and two touchdowns?  The game was decided when the Chiefs living bobblehead, Lawrence Tynes kicked a field goal, and Neil Rackers, one of the best kickers in the league shanked his.  Tynes was set up by a 78 yard screen pass to Larry Johnson.  Rackers was set up when Leinart took a sack.  Oops.

San Francisco 34, Oakland 20
For the second week in a row, DirecTV blacked out a game to protect the innocent eyes of millions of impressionable youth.  Apparently, the Niners won, but the Raiders scored 20 points.  You know how rumors always get exaggerated the more they’re told?  I’ll bet the Raiders really only scored 12 points.

Jacksonville 41, New York Jets 0
Last week, the spunky Jets caused Colts’ fans to need a change of shorts in a near miss upset.  This week?  The Jags pulled the Jets undies up out of their pants and over their heads.  Ouch.

Philadelphia 38, Dallas 24
Drew Bledsoe is infamous for his soul-crushing interceptions, much like Brett Farve, only Farve had 10 years of greatness before he de-evolved into a game-losing turnover machine.  Bledsoe threw three picks (though it felt like 8) including one that fell about 20 yards short of TO, and another that was returned 127 yards for a touchdown to seal the game.  When it was over, TO stormed into the locker room yelling, “Why did you ever sign me?”  Wait, Terrell, you don’t think they keep asking themselves that?

San Diego 23, Pissburgh 13
While the Fathers were in St. Louis proving that Padres only score with altar boys (buh dump ump), the Chargers were at one of those junctures early in the season when you either pick yourself up, or you lay face down in the mud.  After blowing a sure win in Baltimore a week ago, the Chargers were behind at the half to the Steelers.  Bill Cowher’s teams win more than 80 percent of the time when they lead at the half.  Well, 80 isn’t 100, and San Diego came back to win.  Plus, they wore their cool uniforms from the ’60s.  I’ll never understand how teams (Chargers, Golden State Warriors, Brewers) can wear throwbacks that are so much better than their current uniforms.  When the alternate exceeds the ordinary.  Go with the alternate.