CHICAGO — It’s still hard to believe a team was audacious enough to record a rap video revealing their plans to go to the Super Bowl, but the “Super Bowl Shuffle” remains one of the more endearing stories of the 1985 Chicago Bears, whose legendary swagger never seems to grow old.

In Chicago, we’ve relived the ’85 Bears over and over again over the last 40 years, sometimes on anniversaries, and more recently due to the passing of iconic figures like Buddy Ryan or Steve McMichael.

The stories have all been told and retold, but there never seems to be a moment in time when someone doesn’t believe we want to hear them again. The ’85 Bears are the gift that keeps on giving, reminding us of how wonderful a time it was, and how long it’s been since Super Bowl XX.

The latest reminder is courtesy of HBO, which on Tuesday begins airing a 40-minute documentary titled “The Shuffle.”

NFL Films produced the documentary, which is directed by Jeff Cameron. Without having seen it, I strongly believe “The Shuffle” should be required viewing for the current Bears, who seem capable of making a postseason run themselves, despite the unconventional way they win games.

It can not only serve as inspiration, but it should also explain why Bears fans are the way they are.

Most of us here know the story, even if it was handed down by our parents or grandparents. After going 12-0 to start the season, there was a feeling of invincibility surrounding the ‘85 Bears, who had never been to a Super Bowl and hadn’t won a championship since 1963.

A group of players, including William “Refrigerator” Perry and Mike Singletary, famously recorded the video at the Park West on Dec. 3, 1985, the day after their 38-24 loss to the Miami Dolphins on “Monday Night Football,” which was their only loss of the season.

Receiver Willie Gault was the ringleader of the project, but not everyone was on board.

“I don’t agree in bragging before the fact,” McMichael told the Chicago Tribune’s Don Pierson before the start of the playoffs. “I didn’t agree with it.”

Nevertheless, the Bears’ “Shufflin’ Crew” assembled on the nightclub stage and recorded the video, which included silly rap lyrics and bad dance moves, particularly from backup quarterback Steve Fuller. They later added Jim McMahon and Walter Payton, who recorded their parts in front of a blue screen. These were the Bears’ two biggest stars, so convincing them to do it was what really made it seem like a team project, not just a few players.

The rest is history. The “Shuffle” became an instant hit in the era when MTV showed music videos, and you couldn’t turn on the radio in Chicago without hearing a snippet, whether it was a rock station like “The Loop,” a news-talk station like WGN-AM, or a hip-hop station like WGCI-FM. It became the first Billboard song to sell over one million copies without making it into the Top 40 (peaking at No. 41), because many stations didn’t report “novelty” songs to ratings providers.

It was nominated for a Grammy for best R&B performance, though some players obviously had no rhythm at all.

Half of the profits were reportedly earmarked for charities, making it a feel-good story when the video and song became big hits. The players reportedly got $6,000 each, with the rest going to charity.

“We’re not doing this because we’re greedy,” Payton sang. “The Bears are doing it to feed the needy.”

It was an outrageous message to send to the rest of the NFL in late November — basically pointing to the Super Bowl as fait accompli — and even crazier by the time the recording and video were released on Dec. 10, just in time for the holiday sales.

As Singletary says in a teaser to the documentary, the players would look “the biggest idiots ever” if they didn’t at least make it to the Super Bowl.

But Gault said during the playoffs, the lyrics never mentioned winning.

“If you listen to the record, it doesn’t say we’re going to the Super Bowl,” he said. “We didn’t say we’re going to win the Super Bowl. It said we’re going to do a dance, and it’s called ‘The Super Bowl Shuffle.’ ”

It was all semantics. Of course, the Bears had to win the Super Bowl after making the video.

By the time they made it to New Orleans, every bar in the French Quarter was blasting the song out its doors, inducing Bears fans to come inside and make it their home for the week. After their dominating win over New England on Jan. 26, 1986, the song was played on a loop at bars in the Quarter all night.

The postscript of the story occurred that February when Illinois Attorney General Neil Hartigan told Dick Meyer, the record’s producer, that 75% of the profits were to be directed to charities.

Then-Bears president Mike McCaskey said Meyer originally was going to give only 15% to charity, so he asked the attorney general to look into it. Meyer then upped it to 50%.

“You just can’t tell the public, ‘Part of this I’m giving to charity,’ ” a spokesman for Hartigan’s office told me in ’86. “You’ve got to follow the Illinois statute.”

After the Bears’ Super Bowl victory, Chicago Tribune columnist Mike Royko wrote that Meyer owed over $2.1 million to a bank, along with some other outstanding debts. Royko suggested the producer needed the video project to pay off his debts, and then convinced Gault to get his Bears teammates involved. In typical fashion, Royko then took a jab at the Bears owners’ history of frugality.

“The players, of course, figured to make a little money too,” Royko wrote. “You can’t blame them. Anyone who depends on a paycheck from the Bears franchise is wise to stash away as much as he can, when he can.”

Singletary reportedly threw his gold record in the garbage later in protest of reports the bulk of the money wasn’t going to the needy, only to have Gault fish it out. Years later, in 2014, six Bears, including McMahon, Gault, Richard Dent and Otis Wilson, sued the video’s rights owners for not informing the shufflin’ crew of revenues from manufacturing, advertising, sales, licensing and merchandising “The Super Bowl Shuffle.”

“For my opinion, they used us and they made a lot of money and now is the time to pay up,” Wilson told the Tribune.

No matter the controversy over the dispersal of the profits, the video sparked a rush of copycats, including videos in 1986 by the Patriots, Dallas Cowboys, Los Angeles Raiders, Cleveland Browns and Los Angeles Rams, whose version, “Let’s Ram It,” was produced by Meyer.

Suffice to say there will be no documentaries made on any of these videos.

Even Bears coach Mike Ditka, who was not involved with the “Shuffle,” made his own video in ’87 called “The Grabowski Shuffle,” featuring Da Coach and several dancers. As Ditka would say: “This too shall pass.”

“The Super Bowl Shuffle” remains the standard, and with the Bears now 40 years removed from their last championship season, the video is a nostalgic flashback to a bygone era when something could go viral without the aid of the internet or social media.

Hopefully the 2025 Bears can watch “The Shuffle” and come away with a greater appreciation for the history of the team and our city.

As long as they don’t try to emulate the ’85 Bears and make a video of their own, it should be safe for workplace viewing.

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