Image courtesy of Bloomberg OK, I was going to post GP’s continuing saga on the stadium, but it’s the weekend, and most check out, have fun, as it should be, so I’ll save his “Fealty” piece for Mon.
Also, the World Cup literally kicked off in Mexico City yesterday, and what a spectacle! Here’s Mana with a surprise appearance. For you 80s rockers, I definitely recommend Mana/Jaguares and Heroes de Silenco esp if you wanna score a few easy points with the hot mamies [see what I did there?]
I must admit, I do not watch fútbol. It seems like a full-time job. Got a million players on a million teams all across the globe, and most of the great teams are in European time-zones. I’m also American, so I innately disdain ties, flopping while simultaneously craving something more violent. Or as Whitman exclaims,
“I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.”
In HS it was usually the immigrants who played soccer. Us “real” athletes played football, baseball, basketball and wrestled. Soccer, Tennis, Badminton, even swimming and track were for ‘those’ guys; it’s a rather stupid attitude to hold, but hey, HS is nothing but one dumb idea after another.
However, all this changed in World Cup ’94 in Pasadena. A young virile Butch used to frequent Old Town Pasadena quite a bit, picking off drunk girls bar-hopping like a lion in the Serengeti. Hey, I was sloshed myself, so game on! No swiping necessary.
Anyways, World Cup hit Pasadena, and it was NUTS. I was too poor to travel, but the world cup brought Barcelona, Paris, Rio de Janeiro…to provincial moi. It was quite an eye-opener. It was also pure unadulterated euphoria. An international celebration with everyone draped in their flags, hanging off lampposts, singing their foreign songs! Contrast that to the present with masked Gestapo patrolling cities.
The World Cup starts this week in North America, and Channel NEIN has the inside scoop from the United States.
— Jean Jacques Dessalines 🇭🇹🇵🇸🇳🇪🇲🇱🇧🇫🇨🇺 (@JeanJacquesDes7) June 8, 2026
Ever since, I loved watching World Cup [not really soccer]. I think I know enough of it now to really enjoy it without being an expert on formations, managers, etc. It’s an acquired taste, I must admit. It doesn’t lend itself to ESPN Highlight reel clips. In many ways, it’s more like a ballet – or more accurately, ballet blended with hockey – where the tension builds over time like a volcano with sudden monumental eruptions. If you’re in a room of diehards, you can FEEL the tension – the anticipation – the dread – and if a gooooooaaaalll is scored – the ecstasy! God help fans when it goes to penalties. Very few sports can match the World Cup in drama and catharsis.
I also learned what a MAJOR deal it is internationally. I knew a Vietnamese guy whose little village slept in hammocks. They only had one TV in the whole village, and they all huddled to watch the World Cup around it at ungodly hours.
I frequented an English pub. The owner was literally one of the chefs for the Queen of England. St George crosses everywhere. Well, for World Cup, and ONLY World Cup, he’d open up his pub at 6am! I love Bangers and Mash, but never had them with eggs and coffee!
Canada, U.S. and Mexico host The World Cup this time around. It’s once every 4 years. I know the matches are mostly during day time, but if you can, do yourself a favor and hit a ‘soccer’ dive to watch it. Even if you’re not into soccer or are just a casual, I highly recommend it as an experience. If you’re lucky, you’ll run into some drunk Brits and Germans who start chanting their songs. And if you’re REALLY lucky, you’ll cross one of these!
🚨 🇲🇽 GOOOOOOOOOOOAL! Mexico strikes first! In a moment of pure magic, the Tricolor explodes the scoreboard open — Mexico 1 – 0! 🐴🐴 pic.twitter.com/ofFWUn7cR6
In which a billionaire family threatens to run away from home as the rest of us are asked to be sad about it
Let’s start with the part the graphic in your feed is trying very hard to keep you from noticing. The Chicago Bears did not announce that they are moving to Indiana. They announced that their board of directors voted to advance — that lovely, load-bearing little verb — a stadium “development project” in Hammond, with the exact site to be selected. No site. No shovels. No closing date. A vote to keep walking toward a thing they have been walking toward, then away from, then toward again, for three years running.
You know who said as much? The Bears’ own friends in Springfield. State Rep. Kam Buckner, who has been doing the actual work of trying to keep the team, said Kevin Warren called him the morning of the announcement to promise he’d keep talking about an Illinois stadium, and that the statement is — Buckner’s word — less definitive than the one the Bears issued back in February. State Sen. Bill Cunningham said flatly it isn’t fundamentally different from the February version either. So the franchise issued a press release announcing that it has the same feelings it had four months ago, dressed it in a board vote plus a team logo, and a whole genre of guys who think they can read a balance sheet because they own a pickup truck took it as a divorce decree.
It isn’t a divorce decree. It’s a screenager standing in the doorway with a bloated backpack, announcing to the kitchen that this time he really means it, he’s going to go live at his friend’s house in Indiana where they actually appreciate him. And the family — the State of Illinois — has finally, blessedly, learned the correct response, which is to keep eating dinner.
What the McCaskeys are actually mad about
Here is the thing nobody on the angry side of the blog wants to say out loud: this is a tantrum, and we know exactly what it’s about. The Illinois legislature wrapped its spring session without handing the Bears the property-tax “certainty” — the windfall, the assurance, the blank-ish check — that the ownership group wanted. So George McCaskey and Kevin Warren, with the moneyed comfort of minority owners like Pat Ryan behind them, did the only thing a frustrated heir knows how to do when the grown-ups won’t write the number he asked for. They stomped. Publicly. In a press release written by someone who has clearly never met the South Side of Chicago.
Because read the language again, slowly, and try not to laugh. A stadium in Hammond, they tell us, will “transform the region, connecting Northwest Indiana to the South Side of Chicago through the Loop and across neighborhoods and suburbs stretching north of the city.” It will “bring Chicagoland together.” This is the prose of a man who has been told the South Side exists but has never had a reason to drive through it. The South Side does not get connected to a stadium in Hammond. The South Side gets to watch the parking economy, the concession jobs, the game-day money that at least sprayed a few dollars onto the people who set up lots and worked the stands at Soldier Field — gets to watch all of it drive across the state line and land in Lake County, Indiana. You are not enriching the South Side of Chicago. You are trading poor people in Chicago for poor people in Munster and calling it regional synergy.
The honeymoon, then the bill
Now to Indiana, which is doing the most embarrassing thing in this entire saga, and that’s a competitive field. Governor Mike Braun, a man visibly thrilled to dance on Pritzker’s grave several years before anyone has died, welcomed the Bears with “Hoosiers, help me welcome the Chicago Bears to our great state!” and a promise of a partnership “as strong as the ’85 Bears defense.” Set aside that invoking a defense from forty-one years ago to sell a stadium that won’t open until 2031 is its own quiet tragedy. Focus on the structure of the deal he’s so proud of.
Indiana has dangled up to a billion dollars in incentives to land this thing. A billion dollars of Hoosier money, committed by Republican legislators who will cut every ribbon and then be conveniently term-limited or retired by the time the real bills arrive. Because the bills will arrive. The site is industrial Northwest Indiana — Wolf Lake, the kind of acreage that comes with environmental reports, remediation questions, and a zoning gauntlet that has a long, documented habit of turning a published budget into an opening bid. My over-under on what this actually costs by the time it’s playable, with cleanup and overruns priced in, is well north of what’s on any current slide. Put your own number on it. Just make it bigger than theirs.
And when the overruns hit — when the remediation comes in heavy, when the traffic studies demand infrastructure nobody budgeted, when the “world-class” renderings meet a marsh — who’s holding the residual? Not the McCaskeys. Not Illinois. Indiana taxpayers, and Colts fans who never asked for a second team to split their state’s football oxygen and never wanted to subsidize one. The honeymoon lasts exactly until the first invoice the renderings didn’t account for. Then it’s a five-to-eight-year boondoggle with a governor’s name on the groundbreaking and somebody else’s name on the workout.
The part where Illinois quietly wins
So let’s retire the bit where this proves Chicago and Springfield are corrupt and broke. Run the logic. The “corrupt Democrats” you’ve been told to despise are the ones who declined to set public money on fire to keep a billionaire’s franchise from decamping. The fiscally responsible move — the genuinely conservative move, if any of the people cheering this still remembered what that word meant — was to refuse the blank check. Illinois did that. Illinois looked at a project with a price tag that only goes one direction and said: not on our books.
And here’s the dirty secret the McCaskeys’ press release is built to obscure: if the Bears actually go, Illinois loses a narrative and keeps its balance sheet. It eats a news cycle of “Illinois lost the Bears” and in exchange never owes a dime on a domed monument to one family’s tax grievance. The fans don’t even lose the team — Hammond is a twenty-minute drive south of Soldier Field. You can still get there. You can still tailgate. You can still watch them go 8-9 in a new building.
Which brings me to the crude version, for the crude room: this is the rare arrangement where you get to sleep with the supermodel ten times a year and never have to date her. No anniversary. No “we need to talk about the kitchen renovation.” No co-signing the mortgage on a place near Gary that’s going to smell like Gary. Indiana just got down on one knee. Let them. Let them pay her expenses for the next three decades while Chicagoland drives down on Sundays, enjoys the view, and drives home to a city that didn’t put a cent toward the privilege.
So: do I want them to go?
God, yes. Go. Please go. Take the marsh. Take the billion in incentives that becomes two. Take the zoning fights, environmental delays, the Colts fans’ resentment and the governor who’ll have moved on to his next photo op by the time the first beam goes crooked. Take all of it.
Because this statement means precisely nothing — it’s a board vote attached to a feeling, less binding than the one before it, with no site and a guy calling Springfield the same morning to keep the door propped. But on the off chance the tantrum hardens into a moving van? Break out the popcorn. The most entertaining thing the Bears have produced in a decade won’t happen on the field. It’ll happen on a financing spreadsheet in Indianapolis, in real time, for the next five to eight years.
News is still slow, unless a fan wants to dive into the shitshow that is the stadium issue.
Here’s my overall thoughts on the topic.
One of my friends finally attained his Masters in Biz from USC some years back. One of his final projects required him to interview a CFO or CEO of a major corp. So, he booked one from a corp that we would all instantly recognize.
Just so happened that at the time, they were moving a lot of their infrastructure to Ireland.
Why Ireland? Well, it wasn’t for the green beer, leprechauns and redheads, that’s for sure.
It was for – you guessed it – cheaper taxes. He asked the CFO, point blank, “You’re moving for the cheaper taxes, right?”
The CFO paused, kinda grinned, “No. It’s mostly for reason x, y and z…”
CFO knew it was bullshit. My friend new it was bullshit. Everyone knows x, y, z was bullshit. It was lower taxes. Period.
But of course corps fleeing the U.S. [and taking the jobs with them] isn’t exactly popular, and they don’t want any sort of bad PR or god forbid, commy boycotts of their product in the U.S. market.
I’ll give you another example from the flip side. My uncle lived in Texas and worked for Levi’s Jeans for YEARS. They even gave him a silver bracelet, which he gave to me, and is one of my most cherished jewelry [in fact, I think I only own a few pieces of jewelry overall, including my graduation ring I never wear].
Levi’s closed shop in TX, and moved across the border to Mexico.
Levi Strauss & Co. (Levi’s) was never primarily based in Texas, though they did have major factories and distribution centers there before shifting production. The company stopped all of its U.S. manufacturing in 2003, closing its final American factories in Texas and other states to lower labor costs and take advantage of NAFTA.
They offered the workers jobs across the border, but I mean, c’mon. Would YOU uproot your entire family to another country for a job at Levi’s?
So basically, he, and 1,000s of other hard working honest Americans, lost his job.
Seems unfair, doesn’t it?
It’s not – not if you BELIEVE in Capitalism. Capitalism doesn’t care about your uncle, feelings or teams. It ONLY cares about the bottom line. That’s why it’s called ‘the bottom line.’ During the Great Depression a senator asked the CEO of a food manufacture,
‘You can make food cheaper to keep kids from starving’
CEO response, ‘We’re in the business of making money – not feeding kids.’
THAT is Capitalism, and if Indiana profits the McCaskeys and their board more, they’ll take it even if they must build the stadium over a toxic wasteland which makes your $20 beer glow green sans dye.
You and your 50+ years of fandom, suffering, loyalty or civic pride can go fuck itself.
Still slow. I come across interesting vids of football trends, macros and coaching points which illuminate the modern NFL.
This vid dives into whether the cliche ‘run the damn ball’ actually still works
Spoiler alert – running the ball still works, but not maybe as expected. The days of 200 rushing games are much more rare now [though it seems Swift/Monagai racked up a couple last season]. What’s more important is that once the threat IS established, it backs off the safeties. It perhaps makes DCs go less exotic and more basic – and the bootleg becomes a REAL danger.
Most big plays now are off PA and most come in 30-40 yd chunks. Gone are the days of the 5-7 step chuck it up to Randy Moss for 70 yds.
DCs are just too smart. Secondaries too fast. DEs like Garrett too dominant. Need to fool the Ds.
This also tracks with the 9ers just pouncing the Bears. They established the run. Got the LBs and Safeties biting on everything. Then Purdy hit guys wide open on PA. Rinse wash repeat. The D was running like a chicken with its head cut off.
Focusing on the run also enhances the value of the center. So it’s no wonder Linderbaum got PAID or why Bears attacked the C position so vigorously once Dalman retired. The O may literally run through it.
In case you live in a 50’s silo, Rams are going all-in for reigning defensive player of year Myles Garrett. Myles Garrett is coming off a historic season in which he broke the single season sack record. I normally discount a lot of these records which take extra games to achieve. OJ, not Dickerson, AP or Barry, may have my vote for best RB season of all time based on this logic.
But context matters, and we gotta remember, Garrett broke that record [23] on the Browns [mic tap]. THE BROWNS. Not very many games they were playing with a two TD lead to force the opponents to go Air-Raid. I also vividly recall Favre folding into a fetal position for his buddy Strahan to break that record previously, so it’s not as if HIS record was clean either, and Strahan crying about it is epically ironic. Garret also hit the QB 39 times along with notching 33 TTFLs. Incredible.
More details will emerge, I’m certain, but as of right now, this is the compensation:
Adam Schefter@AdamSchefter ·1h🚨🚨🚨
Bombshell: The Browns are finalizing a trade that will send two-time Defensive Player of the Year Myles Garrett to the Los Angeles Rams, per @rapsheet,@TomPelissero and me.
In exchange for Garrett, the Rams are expected to send Pro-Bowl edge Jared Verse, a 2027 first-round pick and other draft-pick compensation still being negotiated to the Browns.
🏈Rams receive: Myles Garrett
🏈Browns receive: Jared Verse, a 2027 first-round pick, a 2028 2nd and a 2029 3rd.
In other words, Rams are going all-in. I was going to write a big article on whether the Bears should make a move on Garrett. The idea centered around ONE question:
Are Bears ready for a true SB push?
Follow up question – trading for Garrett the same as trading for Mack?
Which begs a bigger question. How much better are BJ/Caleb than Nagy/Trub?
Trading multiple 1sts and premium players for a legit SB shot, better?
Or are we, like with Nagy/Trub, falling into the same wishful fallacy that landed Mack but wrecked the team long-term once the Nagy/Trub gambit fizzled out?
Well, all that is moot now as the Rams are signing their Reggie White.
A team the Bears will no doubt have to face in the playoffs the next two years or so, which coincidently mirrors the Caleb rook contract ‘window.’
Lots to consider here, but I’ll keep it short.
I don’t know if the Bears COULD’ve competed against the Rams for Myles.
While BJ/Caleb are promising, if you’re a 30 yr old Myles, you want proven not promising, and McVay/Stafford are proven. They also eliminated Bears from last playoffs. The L.A./Hollywood angle, esp contrasted against Factory of Sadness, is also a real factor.
In addition, the Bears didn’t really roster a Verse lvl defender to throw into the mix [thxs Poles!]. I guess you can dangle Sweat, but then the Browns likely ask for more draft capital, and at this point, it seems like treading water.
Maybe they could’ve offered Rome and Gordon. That’s likely the route I’d go if I’m Bears’ GM. I don’t really believe in Rome. Burden and Loveland are the two top receiving options IMO; plus, we still have Kmet, a new TE, and a gadget KR/WR/Slot.
Gordon is a walking hamstring. Trade him before it’s too late.
OTOH, maybe the Bears really didn’t have a shot. Maybe Garrett told CLE, “It’s L.A. or bust, baby.” and that was that.
So where does this leave the Bears?
Proper fucked.
The Bears are in a Cold War against the Evil Empire – The Packers – who traded for Micah Parsons.
NOW, they’re in an arms’ race vs Rams who just acquired a cobalt bomb.
Not sure Bears could afford to keep sitting on their hands and realistically hope that somehow a motivated Dayo, old Jarrett and raw Booker>ONE Myles Garrett.
This trade might force Poles to more aggressively target, say, DT Jeffery Simmons. More likely outcome though – Poles signs an old ass Cam Jordan or Bosa.
That, or BJ/Caleb must go scorched earth 2000 Rams’ style.
In the early days of the Meiji era there lived a well-known wrestler called O-nami, Great Waves.
O-nami was immensely strong and knew the art of wrestling. In his private bouts he defeated even his teacher, but in public he was so bashful that his own pupils threw him.
O-nami felt he should go to a Zen master for help. Hakuju, a wandering teacher, was stopping in a little temple nearby, so O-nami went to see him and told him of his trouble.
“Great Waves is your name,” the teacher advised, “so stay in this temple tonight. Imagine that you are those billows. You are no longer a wrestler who is afraid. You are those huge waves sweeping everything before them, swallowing all in their path. Do this and you will be the greatest wrestler in the land.”
The teacher retired. O-nami sat in meditation trying to imagine himself as waves. He thought of many different things. Then gradually he turned more and more to the feeling of the waves. As the night advanced the waves became larger and larger. They swept away the flowers in their vases. Even the Buddha in the shrine was inundated. Before dawn the temple was nothing but the ebb and flow of an immense sea.
In the morning the teacher found O-nami meditating, a faint smile on his face. He patted the wrestler’s shoulder. “Now nothing can disturb you,” he said. “You are those waves. You will sweep everything before you.”
The same day O-nami entered the wrestling contests and won. After that, no one in Japan was able to defeat him.
Still nothing of note going on. This is not necessarily the worst thing [just ask Vrabel Pats or Josh Jacob Puke].
As such, finally got around to watching “Nuremburg” starring Russell Crowe as Hermann Göring, Rami Malek [played Freddy Mercury] as psychiatrist Douglas Kelley, and Michael Shannon as Chief Prosecutor Robert H. Jackson.
Crowe superbly plays the highly intelligent, capable and charming Göring. I can’t help but think of Crowe as a younger fit Maximus; now he’s the fat decadent Generalissimo. Perhaps some meta there.
Göring was a legit war hero and ace with 22 confirmed kills in WW1. To put that in perspective, Maverick barely eked out 5 to be Ace. He has the charm and talent of Maverick, the ambition and planning of Iceman, the narcissism of BOTH yet the moral compass of this guy.
That is a DANGEROUS combo as the movie seductively exhibits in a fascinating psychological portrait of “evil.”
The lead prosecutor presents the ‘objective’ adversary, while the psychiatrist seems nearly tragically stuck between, like a fly slowly being consumed by a black hole. It reminds me of what William Blake said about Milton writing “Paradise Lost”: Milton secretly admired Satan.
What I like about this movie is that it shows what needed to take place BEFORE “Saving Private Ryan.” Before the cinematic slaughter of oblivious citizens who were enjoying their apple pie before picking up an M1 Garand. History starts with steins, podiums and gavels, not rifles.
By the end, one will find this all a bit unnerving and relevant, because, sadly, “evil” is ALWAYS relevant: it’s only a crash, pandemic, attack or humiliation away from crawling out of our filthy crawlspaces.
Man, I love the 2025 Season. I find myself watching the replays of it more than any other outside ’85, naturally. [I can’t really bring myself to re-watch the ’06 season because them losing the SB still pisses me off. Just hand the ball to Jones, Lovie!]
As such, I’ll repost the condensed Eagles-V-Bear game.
Small recap. Eagles and Bears both boasted an 8-3 record. Bears were dogs on the road. Everyone assumed they were fugazi and the Iggles would expose them. NOPE.
That being said, it was a very uneven game. The stats were overwhelmingly for the Bears. They nearly doubled the TOP of the Eagles. Monangai alone went over 100 by the 4rth. Bears converted 21 1st downs to the Eagles’ 7 at the start of the 4th. Yet it was still 10-9 and needed 4rth down Loveland conversions, steamrollers plus Caleb magic to close it winning 9 out of last 10 and making the skeptic Bearlieve.
Colston Loveland’s success rate on a route tree last year
One thing that was beautiful – when Eagles tried the Brotherly Shove and the DTs held while Nashon Wright attacked and stripped Hurts on their signature play. Totally changed momentum.
Gotta root for Wright. Dude had rusty hips which couldn’t flip but had a knack for TOs.
The Bishop tells us: ‘When the boys come back ‘They will not be the same; for they’ll have fought ‘In a just cause: they lead the last attack ‘On Anti-Christ; their comrades’ blood has bought ‘New right to breed an honourable race, ‘They have challenged Death and dared him face to face.’
‘We’re none of us the same!’ the boys reply. ‘For George lost both his legs; and Bill’s stone blind; ‘Poor Jim’s shot through the lungs and like to die; ‘And Bert’s gone syphilitic: you’ll not find ‘A chap who’s served that hasn’t found some change. ‘ And the Bishop said: ‘The ways of God are strange!’
– Siegfried Sassoon, 1917
I happened to stumble across a doc on Scottish Independence. I couldn’t stop watching, so I’ll share.
Declaration of Arbroath, 1320
“As long as a hundred of us remain alive, never will we on any conditions be subjected to the lordship of the English. It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself”.
For FREEDOM, not oil, power or geopolitical posturing.
It’s slow as molasses, and the one thing I whole-heartedly agreed with Jeff on was not posting filler material Sports Mockery style. Luckily for y’all, I’m not much a haikuer!
I keep my ears more perked for Chicago-centric stories, and here’s an interesting [2 yr old] vlog on how unique Wrigley Field is, and what it can mean for both the White Sox and Da Bears.
Because Wrigley is now designated as a Historical Land Mark, it’s nigh impossible to modify which creates a nightmare for waste. ONE Cub game produces 315 TONS of waste. Holy, and unholy, crap!
What I didn’t know. Comiskey Park was originally built over a garbage dump in 1909. Talk about an apt metaphor [Zing!] So maybe Indiana land-fill fits the Chicago Stadium tradition, after all.
Still, that’s better than what the Dodgers did when they kicked out all the Mexican women and children from Chavez Ravine and built over graves.
Forcible Evictions: The final holdout families—some of whom refused to sell their properties—were forcefully evicted by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department on May 9, 1959, an event known locally as “Black Friday”
Maybe ICE agents should sport Dodger hats when out raiding.
Though I suppose it can always be worse. ‘Merica!
Clemson Memorial Stadium (Clemson, SC): For years, thousands of tailgating football fans parked over approximately 500 unmarked graves. The site is the final resting place for enslaved men and women who built the original university plantation, as well as early Black sharecroppers.
Makes worrying about ‘light pollution’, parking, seating, domes and traffic seem like Gen Alpha issues.
Shot out to the vlogger for a Ship of Theseus Paradox reference. Speaking of Stadium, apparently the Bears haven’t even done a traffic study for Arlington. My other stat prof [I had like 4 of them since I kept flunking] used to actually do traffic studies. Think he said the goal was just to keep drivers making lefts [insert “National European Vacation” Paris scene here].
