Lots of Bears fans can rattle off Brian Urlacher’s career highlights: Rookie of the Year, Defensive Player of the Year, eight-time Pro Bowler, future Hall of Famer. But there is one achievement that won’t show up in an on-air caption during an interview:

Most career box-ups.

Wait—what?

“I don’t talk about boxing people up,” the tight-lipped Urlacher said. “I just do it.”

Though Urlacher claims he’s “not going to comment on the box game with the media,” who better to explain the Box Game than the career leader in box-ups?

“The object is to get a box and put it on someone’s head without them knowing,” Urlacher told teammate Robbie Gould on the chicagobears.com show “The Final Horn,” “until the box is on their head and it’s too late.”

The basics of the Box Game are as follows:

1. Pull the flaps off the top and bottom of an empty cardboard box so you are holding a hollow box cylinder.

2. Sneak up behind a teammate.

3. Slam the box over his head and shoulders.

The only rule? You can’t box a guy when he’s naked.

ALLIANCES

Sources told RedEye the Box Game dates to at least 2007.

“It kind of just happened one day,” Charles Tillman said. “I can’t even remember.”

What is certain, however, is the game has evolved into a brutally contested battle with alliances, truces and broken truces.

Basically, the team’s two big groups—the defensive line and the linebackers—are locked in a constant struggle for supremacy and loyalty among the other units. Their lockers are in the back of the locker room, and from that position they wield influence over the rest of the participants.

Joining Urlacher and his most-career box-ups is Lance Briggs. From their place along the side wall, Briggs and Urlacher shout across the locker room at young running backs and receivers, warning them that the linebackers can protect them only if they join forces.

So far, the recruitment strategies of Urlacher and Briggs have been successful. “We help out the linebackers a little bit,” said Matt Forte, arguably the offense’s best boxer. “I think everybody’s against the D-line because they’re the big guys and they try to bully everybody with the boxes.”

“When it comes to the boxing game,” Amobi Okoye said, “Lak [Urlacher] is himself, and Lance does pretty good, but the D-line as a group, oh yeah. Everybody wants us.”

“I don’t have an alliance with them,” Urlacher said of his strained relationship with the defensive line. “Those mother[bleepers] don’t play fair.”

 

 

I feel like Ron Burgundy is explaining Jogging to me right now, “Apparently you just run, for an extended period of time”. Apparently you just put a box on top of someone’s head, and then you win. That’s it, that’s the game. And I for one could not be more into it. So simple, so meathead, so perfect. Just put a box on someone and you basically own their life. Probably the most emasculating thing you can do to another man without fucking his wife or stealing his dog. I want to box everyone. I want to box Crowder and Rovell, just walk around the city putting people in a box. What are you going to do? You can’t argue? The only rule is don’t box up anyone when they’re naked which is basically just a “No Gay Stuff” rule. Everything else is in.

 

Maybe if we’re lucky someone will box up Tice and by box up I mean fire him immediately.

…
PS
Can’t you just see the “No Naked Boxing” rule coming about because J’Marcus Webb boxed someone when they were showering. Like it was a completely understood unspoken rule, no one had ever attempted to box a naked person and then J-Webb started boxing people when they were buck naked and Urlacher and Briggs had to sit him down and explicitly explain to him how naked boxing was not cool.