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  • The Hammond Bears

    The Hammond Bears

    GP part deux

    • Welcome to Hammond, Indiana — Please Watch Your Step (and Your Air Quality)

    Let’s talk about the Wolf Lake site, because nobody covering this story with knee pads seems to want to. The Bears’ preferred location — the Lost Marsh Golf Course near 129th Street and Calumet Avenue — is roughly 18 miles southeast of Soldier Field. It sits next to the BP Whiting Refinery, the largest oil refinery in the Midwest. It was built over an old industrial landfill. Drilling crews have already been out there flagging buried water and gas lines.

    Wolf Lake itself has a history that would make even the most enthusiastic real estate agent wince. Gangsters used it as a body disposal site in the 1920s and 30s. It was the dumping ground for a murder victim in the infamous Leopold and Loeb case in 1924. And now, in 2026, Hammond Mayor Thomas McDermott Jr. stood before a committee and, reportedly choking up with emotion, declared it a “once-in-a-generation opportunity.” Maybe he was choking on the shit backing up in his colon.

    He’s not wrong. It really is a once-in-a-generation opportunity — to commit a historic, billion-dollar environmental boondoggle.

    The environmental remediation alone on a site like this — industrial landfill, proximity to a major refinery, underground pipelines, contaminated soil — could easily add hundreds of millions to the project cost. The Bears’ own “due diligence” is still ongoing. Nobody knows what’s actually down there yet. The Indiana bill doesn’t even nail down who pays for cost overruns. What starts as a $3 billion project has every hallmark of a $7-8 billion disaster in the making once you factor in cleanup, infrastructure, litigation, and the inevitable moment when someone finds something truly nasty underground. And when that bill comes due, you can bet the state of Indiana — and the taxpayers of Lake County — will be staring at it. See how eager they are when the Casinos tell them to eat it and pony up. Who knows, Trump may destroy the EPA by then and it’s a non-problem. Just make sure your health insurance is good before attending a game.

    Indiana is committing roughly $1 billion in public funds, to be financed through a cocktail of admissions taxes, food-and-beverage taxes, and hotel taxes. Sound familiar? It should. It’s almost exactly the same structure as the Arlington Heights deal the Bears couldn’t get Illinois to finalize. Except it’s on a landfill. Next to a refinery. In a state that already has an NFL franchise in Indianapolis whose fans are now being asked to welcome a second team that will compete with them for everything from sponsorships to media attention.

    Colts fans: how does Kevin’s dick taste?

    • The NFL Blackout Problem Nobody Is Talking About

    Here’s something the excitement-drunk Hammond boosters and Bears beat reporters apparently haven’t gotten around to mentioning: the Chicago media market.

    The Bears currently play in Chicago. Their entire fanbase — the people who buy tickets, the people who fill the stadium, the people who make home games sellouts — live in the Chicago metro area. Move the team 18 miles across a state line into Hammond, Indiana, and you have now placed the franchise outside the Chicago market for NFL broadcasting purposes.

    Under NFL blackout rules, if games in Hammond don’t sell out, Chicago can no longer be blacked out — because Chicago isn’t in the team’s home market anymore. You’ve now created a situation where Bears fans in Chicago have every incentive to stay home and watch on TV rather than make the trek to Hammond. And if attendance struggles, the revenue projections underpinning the entire Indiana financing structure start to look like they were written on a cocktail napkin. In a casino.

    Kevin Warren seems to have bet that Bears fans will follow the team anywhere. That is a fascinating assumption to make about a fanbase that has been historically loyal despite decades of organizational incompetence — but loyalty has limits. Driving into Indiana, past a refinery, to sit in a dome built on a landfill, to watch a team that no longer officially calls your city home? Some fans will do it. Many won’t. Chicago may show balls and petition the NFL to remove the city’s name from the team. A lawsuit they should easily win. Hammond Bears? Sounds like some shit microbrew.

    • George McCaskey: A Portrait in Incompetence — and Desperation

    Let’s dispense with sympathy entirely and talk about what’s actually driving George McCaskey, because it isn’t football. It was never football.

    Virginia McCaskey, the Bears’ matriarch and daughter of George Halas, did what wealthy patriarchs and matriarchs always do when they want to avoid estate taxes while keeping peace at the Thanksgiving table: she distributed ownership shares across the family. Thin slices — 3%, 4%, 5% here and there — handed out to children and grandchildren who, by and large, care about the Chicago Bears the way you care about a stock ticker. They don’t go to games. They don’t watch film. They watch their bank accounts.

    Virginia is gone now. And those shareholders — the entitled, football-indifferent beneficiaries of the Halas family legacy — have made their position clear to George: generate cash flow or we sell. Not to just anyone, either. There are buyers circling. The Ryan family, among others, has the capital and the appetite to start quietly accumulating those minority shares until someone wakes up one morning and realizes the McCaskey era is over not with a dramatic sale but with a slow-motion death by a thousand small transactions. George was probably instructed by Virginia in her last days to not allow that to happen.

    George McCaskey knows this. He knows the only thing standing between him and irrelevance is a revenue stream large enough to keep the restless shareholders fat and happy; exactly one thing generates that kind of cash flow fast enough to matter: a casino.

    Not a stadium. A casino.

    The “football town” vision — the restaurants, the retail, the hotels, the entertainment district — is the polite version of what this is actually about. The Bears have been in conversations about casino licensing as part of the Arlington Heights development for years. A stadium-adjacent casino, in a state with regulated gambling, attached to one of the NFL’s most historic franchises, in the Chicago metro area, would generate revenue that dwarfs anything the stadium itself produces. That’s the cash cow that keeps the fractious McCaskey shareholders from selling their slices to the highest bidder.

    Which raises a question nobody in the compliant Bears media wants to ask: is the Hammond move real, or is it a pressure play designed to finally shake loose a casino license from Illinois that the state has been reluctant to grant? Because if Illinois caves — if they pass the infrastructure bill, freeze the property taxes, and throw in a casino license to keep the Bears in Arlington Heights — George McCaskey gets everything he needs to pacify his shareholders without Kevin Warren driving the franchise into a landfill.

    And if it’s not a pressure play? If Warren genuinely wants Hammond? Then George McCaskey is a man so thoroughly outmaneuvered by his own President that he’s about to sacrifice the family’s century-old franchise on the altar of Kevin Warren’s ego and his own shareholders’ vacation home mortgages. George Halas is screaming at Virginia right now up in the clouds.

    Image via Associated Press (AP)

    Last year, the Matt Eberflus debacle — firing the head coach at halftime of a game the Bears were losing badly, one of the most publicly humiliating in-season firings in NFL history — prompted Colin Cowherd and others to name McCaskey among the worst owners in the league. The hiring of Ben Johnson and the emergence of Caleb Williams as a generational quarterback gave Bears fans genuine hope. But ask yourself: why did the Bears suddenly get competent on the field right when the franchise value conversation got interesting? A team with a generational QB, fresh off a playoff run, in a massive media market, is worth considerably more to a potential buyer than a perennial doormat. George McCaskey, whether by accident or design, presides over a franchise at peak valuation — right at the moment the stadium situation threatens to crater it.

    He’s not a villain. He’s not clever enough to be a villain. He’s a man in over his head, surrounded by family members who want their money, manipulated by a President running his own agenda, and apparently unable to see that the exit Warren is steering toward leads directly off a cliff. Warren, a man the Big 10 couldn’t shed fast enough

    • Kevin Warren’s Long Con

    Kevin Warren has been running a masterclass in institutional manipulation since he arrived. His open letter framing the Bears as benevolent private investors who are simply asking for “basic infrastructure” while demanding $850-950 million in public funds was, as one analyst put it, a semantic trick — and it worked beautifully on most of the Chicago sports media.

    Now he’s done it again. The Bears were apparently in productive negotiations with Illinois as recently as Wednesday, February 19th — a three-hour session that Governor Pritzker described as “very positive.” The Bears then canceled Thursday’s committee hearing — which, according to Pritzker, was at the Bears’ request — and almost simultaneously dropped a statement praising Indiana’s SB27 as the most meaningful step forward in their stadium history. The blog that covers Springfield politics talks about Pritziker wanting things like affordability in ticket prices so average people can attend, and Warren responds by not showing up to meetings and putting power plays. Maybe Warren will scream “but the Dow is at 50,000!”

    That is not negotiating in good faith. That is a man executing a plan while the other party thinks they’re having a conversation.

    Whether Warren genuinely wants to be in Hammond or is using Indiana as a gun to Illinois’ head, the damage to the relationship with Illinois is real. And if he actually follows through with Hammond — landfill, refinery, Colts country, blackout rules, and all — then he will have maneuvered George McCaskey into presiding over a historic blunder that will define this franchise forever. And with the gravity of the decision, it’s really forever. The Chicago Bears are destroyed by a guy that was given the lowest approval by Big Ten athletic directors in Big 10 history.

    George is handing him the matches. Kevin is already holding the gasoline.

    • The Hype Machine: Who’s Driving the Narrative?

    Within minutes of the Indiana House Ways and Means Committee vote on Thursday, the Bears media ecosystem lit up like a pinball machine. Ben Devine of @Chicago_NFL — one of the more widely-followed Bears accounts — was declaring “The Chicago Bears are indeed moving to Northwest Indiana” and “Breaking: The Chicago Bears plan to commit $2 billion toward building their new stadium near Wolf Lake in Hammond, Indiana” before the ink was dry, before any site due diligence was complete, before anyone had answered the rather important question of who pays for cleaning up an industrial landfill next to the Midwest’s largest oil refinery.

    “Indeed moving.” Not “may be moving.” Not “are signaling a move.” Indeed moving. Done deal. Pack your bags, Chicagoland.

    Now, a few questions worth sitting with.

    When a media personality with a large Bears following unilaterally declares a franchise relocation a fait accompli based on a committee vote and a carefully worded team statement that doesn’t actually commit to anything — is that journalism? Is it analysis? Or is it something else?

    When that same breathless certainty is echoed almost simultaneously across multiple Bears-adjacent accounts, all amplifying the same narrative of inevitability — is that organic reaction? Or does it look, at least a little, like a coordinated pressure campaign designed to make Illinois lawmakers feel like the train has already left the station? It would be fun to look at Devine’s checking account and see if perhaps he’s on the dole.

    Who benefits when Bears fans panic-share “they’re definitely leaving” posts that flood Springfield legislators’ inboxes and social feeds? Who benefits when the move feels so inevitable that Illinois is stampeded into a desperate, unfavorable deal — or, alternatively, when Illinois folds entirely and Warren gets everything he wanted?

    Here’s what we know: Kevin Warren has already demonstrated that he is willing to use media framing as a negotiating weapon. His “open letter” reframed an $850 million public subsidy ask as a modest request for “basic infrastructure.” The Bears canceled an Illinois committee hearing — at their own request, per Pritzker — and within the same news cycle had a statement praising Indiana ready to go. That is not spontaneous. That is choreographed.

    So when the same media cycle that amplifies Warren’s every press release starts declaring the move definitive, based on nothing more than a framework bill that doesn’t even specify financing terms — it’s worth asking who is writing the script, and who is simply reading it.

    And this isn’t just a matter of Devine being enthusiastic or credulous. In December, he posted a claim that has since ricocheted across Bears social media as established fact: that Illinois is “demanding” the Bears pay for roads and infrastructure, framing it as something “even more rare” than a team privately funding its own stadium — as if Illinois were the aggressor shaking down a good-faith franchise.

    This is not a matter of interpretation. It is factually inverted. It’s a lie and Devine is a liar.

    Illinois is not demanding the Bears pay for infrastructure. Illinois is declining to pay $850 million in infrastructure costs for the Bears. Those are opposite things. The Bears chose a site that lacked existing infrastructure — in large part because that’s why the land was cheap — and are asking the state to cover the gap. Illinois saying “we’re not sure we want to spend $850 million on that” is not an unreasonable shakedown. It is a government weighing whether a near-billion-dollar expenditure is in the public interest, especially while taxpayers still owe $350 million on the 2003 Soldier Field renovations the Bears demanded and then abandoned.

    Szymanski amplified it. Others amplified it further. By the time it reached the average Bears fan’s timeline, Illinois had been cast as the villain demanding the franchise privately fund its own roads — a cartoonishly unreasonable position that the state never actually took.

    That’s how the machine works. Warren frames it. Devine broadcasts it. Szymanski validates it. The myth calcifies into conventional wisdom before anyone checks the receipts.

    Devine may be entirely sincere. He may genuinely believe what he posts. But sincerity and accuracy are different things. And a media environment where “Bears insider” accounts race to validate Warren’s narrative without interrogating it — without mentioning the landfill, the refinery, the blackout rules, the Colts fans who didn’t ask for a roommate, the $7-8 billion remediation risk — isn’t covering the story. It’s becoming part of the story.

    Bears fans deserve better than hype merchants dressed up as analysts. The franchise’s future is too important to be left to people whose loudest skill is hitting “post” fast.

    • FAFO, the MAGA Chorus, and the Ghost of Sweaty Teddy Phillips

    Scroll through any Bears stadium comment section right now and you’ll find a particular species of intellectual wildlife repeating the same three syllables with the enthusiasm of someone who just learned what an acronym is: FAFO. Fuck around and find out. Illinois fucked around. Now they’re finding out.

    It’s catchy. It’s also historically illiterate, politically motivated, and being fed to the internet knuckle-draggers by people who know exactly what they’re doing.

    Let’s start with the history since the FAFO crowd apparently skipped it.

    Twenty-plus years ago, the Bears — under their previous CEO Ted Phillips, a man so perspiration-prone that the nickname “Sweaty Teddy” wasn’t even mean, it was just accurate — took the late Mayor Richard M. Daley to the absolute woodshed. The 2002 Soldier Field renovation was a masterpiece of civic fleecing. The Bears got a brand new stadium shell dressed up in the bones of a historical landmark, financed through bonds backed by a 2% Chicago hotel tax. The city and state were told the debt would be manageable. The pandemic gutted hotel revenue. The hotel business never fully recovered. Chicago’s finances, never exactly a model of fiscal health, got worse.

    As of early 2024, Illinois taxpayers still owe approximately $589 million in combined principal and interest on that renovation — $375 million in principal, $214 million in interest, with final payment due in 2032. The Bears’ lease at Soldier Field runs through 2033. Meaning: Illinois will finish paying for the Bears’ old stadium approximately one year before the Bears’ legal obligation to play there expires. At which point the Bears will presumably be gone, and Illinois will own a renovated historic venue with no anchor tenant and a $589 million receipt in the drawer.

    Sweaty Teddy got his stadium. Stayed on as CEO for decades on the strength of that one negotiating win. And Chicago is still paying for it.

    So when Governor Pritzker looks at the Bears coming back to the table with another demand — this time $850 million in infrastructure, a 40-year tax freeze, and a sales tax exemption on construction materials — and says we need to think carefully about this, he isn’t “fucking around.” He is a governor who has watched his state get fleeced once already, who is staring at $589 million in remaining debt from the last time Illinois played ball, and who has some elementary obligation to the taxpayers of his state not to simply bend over and say “thank you, may I have another.”

    But here’s where it gets nakedly political. JB Pritzker is widely considered a serious contender for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination. He’s wealthy, he’s governed a major blue state, and he has ambitions that extend well beyond Springfield. The Indiana Republican establishment — Governor Mike Braun, Speaker Todd Huston, and the rest — know this perfectly well. They are not primarily interested in football. They are interested in handing a potential 2028 Democratic presidential candidate a headline that reads: Pritzker Lost the Chicago Bears.

    The FAFO chorus in the comment sections isn’t organic Bears fan outrage. It’s astroturfed GOP trolling with a football spin. Indiana Republicans get to look pro-business, pro-growth, and locally triumphant while simultaneously handing their national allies a weapon to use against a Democrat who might be running for president in two years. The Bears are a prop. Pritzker is the target. And the knuckle-draggers happily typing FAFO into YouTube comments are doing exactly what they’ve been primed to do — generate the appearance of popular momentum for a narrative someone else wrote.

    None of them will drive to Hammond to watch a game on a Saturday night in January when it’s 14 degrees and the lake effect snow is coming sideways off Lake Michigan.

    Halas Hall convincing Bear fans Indiana is actually part of Illinois

    But they’ll type FAFO until their fingers fall off, because that’s free, and it’s fun, and someone upstream from them is very pleased that they’re doing it.

    Pritzker isn’t a villain in this story. He’s a governor who looked at $589 million in outstanding debt from the last time Illinois gave the Bears what they wanted and concluded — reasonably — that the state should negotiate rather than capitulate. The fact that his political opponents have successfully reframed “fiscal responsibility” as “fucking around” is a testament to how completely Warren’s narrative operation has colonized the discourse.

    Sweaty Teddy would be proud.

    • Illinois Isn’t Blameless

    To be fair — and fairness requires acknowledging this — Illinois has been a willing participant in its own humiliation. Pritzker treated this as anything but a priority. The state’s response to years of Bears negotiations has been the governmental equivalent of “yeah, we’ll get to it.” The commercial property tax situation in Illinois is genuinely hostile to major development. The Arlington Heights deal dragged on for three years without resolution.

    But none of that changes the fact that the Bears are now seriously contemplating building a $7+ billion stadium complex on an industrial landfill next to a refinery, in a state that has one NFL team already, financed by a public investment structure that is functionally identical to the deals they claimed were unworkable in Illinois — except with substantially more geological and environmental risk.

    Illinois failed the Bears. The Bears are about to fail themselves.

    • The NFL Should Step In — And Chicago Should Play Hardball

    Here is something that has gone almost entirely undiscussed in the breathless coverage of Hammond’s “once-in-a-generation opportunity”: the NFL has a vested interest in this deal not happening, and Roger Goodell should say so loudly.

    The Chicago market is one of the most valuable in American sports. The Chicago Bears brand — one of the league’s founding franchises, the Monsters of the Midway, the team of Butkus and Payton and Urlacher — derives enormous value from its association with that city. Moving the franchise 18 miles across a state line to a landfill adjacent to a BP refinery in Hammond, Indiana does not make the Chicago Bears more valuable. It makes them a regional curiosity with an identity crisis, competing for attention in a market that now has to share its NFL loyalties with the Indianapolis Colts, who did not ask for a roommate and whose fanbase has been notably unenthusiastic about the prospect.

    The league has intervened in stadium situations before. It has influence over where franchises land and how deals are structured. If the NFL is serious about protecting franchise values — and it is, because franchise values are the foundation of every owner’s net worth and every TV deal ever negotiated — then Goodell should be on the phone with Warren and McCaskey telling them that Hammond is not an acceptable outcome for one of the league’s flagship franchises.

    But let’s say the league stays quiet, and Warren gets his way. Here’s a card Chicago hasn’t played yet, and should:

    The city of Chicago owns the name.

    Not legally, perhaps — trademark law is complicated and the Bears have held their marks for decades. But politically and culturally, “Chicago Bears” belongs to Chicago the way “New York Yankees” belongs to New York. If the Bears relocate to Hammond, Indiana, the city of Chicago should immediately and loudly challenge the franchise’s right to continue using the Chicago name. File the legal motions. Make it expensive. Make it embarrassing. Force the NFL and the Bears to litigate in public whether a team playing in Hammond, Indiana gets to trade on the identity and history of a city it just abandoned.

    The Hammond Bears.

    Say it out loud. Let that land. Think that works for Rodger Goodell? I don’t fucking think so.

    Under NFL blackout rules, once the team plays in Hammond, Chicago is no longer the home market. The city cannot be blacked out for games that don’t sell out. Bears fans in Chicago — the actual Bears fans, the ones who grew up with this team, who remember the ’85 season, who endured decades of McMahon and Grossman and Cutler and the rest — will watch from their couches while a stadium built on an industrial landfill in Indiana fills with Indiana residents who six months ago had no interest in the Chicago Bears.

    The Hammond Bears. Playing in a dome next to the BP Whiting Refinery. In a city with a population of 70,000. Trying to sell out a 60,000-seat stadium to a fanbase that mostly lives in a different state.

    Roger Goodell should be embarrassed that this conversation is even happening. And if it happens, Chicago should make sure the NFL feels every inch of it.

    Illinois still has until May 31st to pass legislation. It’s a long shot. The Bears, having now publicly and effusively praised Indiana and called SB27 the most meaningful step forward in their stadium efforts to date, would take a significant credibility hit by pivoting back to Springfield.

    But meaningful step forward toward what, exactly? Toward a dome on a landfill next to the BP Whiting Refinery, in a city that borders Chicago but is definitionally not Chicago, in a state that didn’t ask for a second NFL franchise and whose existing NFL fanbase isn’t thrilled about sharing?

    Bears fans deserve better than this. Caleb Williams deserves better than this. The franchise, at this particular moment in its history, has more on-field promise than it has had in decades.

    And Kevin Warren appears to be steering it directly into Wolf Lake.

    George McCaskey, for his part, will probably be surprised when it happens.

  • When a win is more than a win, or is it?

    When a win is more than a win, or is it?

    By reg Clockwork Orange and Blue

    Aaron Rodgers has a career 25-5 record against the Bears. He famously declared his ownership of the Bears following the Rodgers Packers’ penultimate victory against the Beloved in Rodgers’ final year with the team. Nothing tastes as sweet, or devastates as much, than a win or loss against the Packers, and this was especially true with Rodgers at the helm. And now in week 12 of an improbable 7-3 season, the Bears are faced with an aging Rodgers on a different team.

    8-3 is a mark that would put the Bears one win closer to the magic number of 10, a total that would certainly catapult them to the playoffs and mark the start of what could be the Bears team we have all been thirsting for – one that wins games not in spite but because of their offense and quarterback. Are all wins equal? Do we dare now move the goalposts from “any win is a good win”?

    With Rodgers suffering (my god, I hope he is suffering) a broken left wrist and marked as questionable to play on Sunday, do we hope to see him in the pocket, knowing full well his ownership, his football voodoo, over the Bears?

    You and I know he wants to be dancing out of the pocket after a near sack, twisting and galloping with Bears in pursuit from behind while he angles toward the flat, and with a flick of the wrist, sending a perfect lofted spiral into the waiting hands of a streaking receiver, breaking Chicago’s spirit once more. You just know he wants to do that one last time, to punctuate his career with a defining statement: “I will forever own you.”

    On the flip side, even though he is not with Green Bay, what would be sweeter than to see Rodgers rolling in agony on the Soldier Field turf after releasing a lame duck following a brutal full frontal blow, a ball that flutters gently down into the hands of a waiting safety who then speeds by the scene of the crime and all eyes are not on the motionless Rodgers, but on the celebration in the end zone, the final score that ends both the game and Rodgers’ career.

    Do you take that chance with Rodgers, knowing it could take you back to the heartbreak of the last 20 years, but also knowing that you could find yourself with a real reason to say “this Bears team is different and for real”? Or would you rather not face that prospect and see Mason Rudolph under center, knowing the chances for victory are that much greater. How badly do you want to reach 10 wins – are you a pragmatist or a romantic?

    Mike Tomlin and the Steelers are the quintessential pragmatists. It is why he is where he is in his 19th season, having never suffered a losing season, yet only winning a single Super Bowl. Do we want to be the Steelers? Would you be happy if Ben Johnson’s career mirrored Tomlin’s?

    I would not. I am a Romantic, an Idealist, and I have an inkling that Ben Johnson is too. Does he enjoy the wins? Yes. he certainly does. But in his decisions, I do not see Tomlin, or Lovie. I see a man driven by his ideals. He knows what he wants and he knows what he wants to see. He is a man who will not just be satisfied with a .600 winning percentage and a long career. He wants to feel the adrenaline of a win without excuses.

    He wants to beat Rodgers.

    And so do I.

  • Doubles Troubles (The Year of the Tiger, Part 1) by guest writer IBNO

    Doubles Troubles (The Year of the Tiger, Part 1) by guest writer IBNO


    SETTING:

    A late-1980s football practice field, next to a Frankenstein high school patched together with multiple annexes over multiple decades. The school sits near the center of a conservative former farm town, now wealthy western suburb of Chicago. In the distance behind the field is a small Jewel grocery store. Above the Jewel sign, the town clocktower can be seen. The clock gongs 8 o’clock on a dewy August morning that promises to turn the dirt-spotted practice field into a brick oven well before noon.

    CHARACTERS:

    John Towne, Chemistry teacher and Head Coach of the varsity football team. Short of stature and stern, unless actively smiling he appears quietly furious–with the pent-up rage of a church pastor who found out his daughter enjoys servicing the basketball team under the bleachers. JT’s close-set eyes are piercingly blue, and he wears his ballcap pulled low to shade his eyes from the morning sun.

    Ross Horn, Athletic Director, Offensive Line and Assistant Head Coach of the varsity football team. With a haircut that only recently graduated from a Beatles Bowl, and a mustache that would do Ron Jeremy proud, his deep baritone is incapable of anything below “too loud for a small room.” The team will soon come to fear three simple words spoken from the man in charge of their conditioning: “On the ball.”

    Ron McTavish, P.E. teacher and Defensive Coordinator. A young Mike Ditka–minus a neck–he is plain-spoken and an extremely effective communicator to young men. A graduate of the Christian college across the train tracks from the high school, he neither wears his faith on his sleeve, nor judges his players by theirs–but the strongest epithet he is ever heard to utter is “gosh darn it!” And even then, he blushes.

    Billy “Sky” Walker, Defensive backfield coach. The most junior of the coaches. When not wearing mirrored aviators, he appears to be staring off at clouds. No one is entirely sure what he teaches at the high school.

    THE BACKGROUND:
    The school has legendary graduates, including football luminaries, but the football program has fallen on hard times. Last year’s Varsity team had great potential scuttled by a teachers’ strike (and resulting forfeited games) and reckless personalities. During the prior school year, an alcohol-fueled party resulted in several seniors and then-juniors getting caught with or near alcohol–a violation of the school’s rigid Athletic Code. Several of this year’s seniors were banned from sport, and several more were allowed on the team only on the strictest probation. It is suspected that even more seniors–including football players–were at the party and escaped Athletic Code justice.

    THE SCENE:

    Somewhere around 80 varsity recruits are lined up in rows, facing the four captains. The first day of practice, every player is in helmet and practice jersey color-coded for offense and defense–and for many, late-80s neon shorts. The captains call out the order of warm-up stretches and calisthenics. Jumping jacks. Hamstring stretches. Then push-ups. Captain Dan calls out “down!” and “up!” and the team counts each push-up until they reach 20.

    COACH JOHN TOWNE [Loudly]: That was awful! Out of synch. Do it again!

    [The captains look at each other, mentally hit rewind, and call out the instructions. Captain Dan again calls out “down!” and “up!” and the team again counts out 20 push-ups.]

    JT [Louder]: Those aren’t push-ups! Jurgens isn’t even going all the way down! Do them again!

    [Jurgens, a hulking sophomore defensive lineman elevated to varsity during equipment pickup the prior day, starts to protest, but thinks better of it after immediately being shushed by the teammates near him.]

    JT: Start over! All the way down, all the way up, as a team!

    [The captains call out the cadence for another 20 push-ups. After 20, some players put their knees down to rest or to stand up. John Towne calls out:]

    JT: Still out of synch. Sloppy! A bunch of individuals! Do it again–as a team!

    [The captains look at each other again, wordlessly converging on the realization that their first day of leadership will cast them as the soldiers guarding the trains going to Auschwitz. The fourth set of push-ups begins, this time the count stopping at 10.]

    JT: Carpenter’s back isn’t straight! He’s got his butt in the air. You guys expect to play football when you can’t even do 20 push-ups? Everyone straighten out your backs! All of you!

    [The team holds a plank through a minute or more of denigration from the head coach before…]

    JT: Start over!

    [The count makes it to 15 before John Towne again interrupts with a shout. Players freeze in the plank position, many with arms shaking already. Ross Horn looks on, his jaw clenched. Ron McTavish keeps his head down, and continues scuffing a hole in the dirt with his cleats. Billy Walker stares off into the distance.]

    JT: You have to decide–right here, right now, if you want to be a football team. Or if you want to be Mr. Hot Shot, star of your own show. To be on this team, you don’t have to be the fastest, or the strongest–Lord knows, just about the only guys who passed qualifications are your captains–but you do have to put the team before yourself and give 100 per cent every day. That’s the rule. And you have to follow the rules! Start again!

    [The captains call out the instructions and start the cadence. Again, the count gets to 10 before interruption. The team again holds a plank. Most players are breathing hard. Some are gasping.]

    JT: Weller isn’t going down all the way, start over!

    [A pattern seems to be emerging, with Head Coach John Towne singling out the younger players as failing. The seniors avoid critique. The captains start the count over.]

    JT: Stop! Half the receivers don’t have their backs straight. Maybe it’s because none of you made qualifications in bench press…

    [Sweat streams liberally from player’s faces while they hold planks and attempt more sets. Gasping and grunting and coughing comes from most players; some sound like they’re beginning to retch. No one knows the total count for certain, but somewhere north of 180 push-ups, Ross Horn’s stoic mask cracks.]

    ROSS HORN [muttering loudly]: Jesus, John, I think they get the point.

    [John Towne glares daggers at Ross Horn, who returns the stare without flinching. Ron McTavish suddenly looks up from the ground and shouts.]

    RON MCTAVISH: OK, we’ll save the rest for the afternoon! Let’s break into position groups. Front seven, on me! D-backs, follow Coach Walker to the south fence. Offensive line, with Coach Horn at the sled. Backs and receivers, with Coach Towne…

    [The players get to their feet, shakily, and head towards their coaches. Joe Fisher, a junior tight end, is the first to vomit that day, noisily through his face mask.]

  • Ghassan the Nut-man by Guest Reg IBNO

    Ghassan the Nut-man by Guest Reg IBNO

    In grad school I had a fellowship to study Arabic in Syria. Even for a seasoned Middle East scholar like myself, it was an eye-opening experience.

    I lived near a couple little corner shops–basically Syrian bodegas–right next to each other. For some reason, I mostly patronized the shop owned and run by Ghassan, who was one of the nicest people I’d ever met – not just in Syria. Snow-white hair combed straight back, with a charcoal grey mustache; he was a gentle grandpa type. His shop was in the Christian quarter, but I wasn’t sure if he was Christian or Muslim, and he didn’t give hints one way or the other. He always had a smile, and and displayed Jobian patience even with my stumbling Arabic.

    Ghassan’s shop had bins by the counter filled with various roasted nuts, and my colleagues and I had fallen into a routine of climbing up to the roof of our building in the evenings, having a beer and snacking on nuts. So most days included a stop to buy from Ghassan the Nut-man.

    One day I walked into Ghassan’s shop to buy something small, but I didn’t have enough coinage while my next-smallest denomination was a bill worth about $40. Ghassan couldn’t (or wouldn’t) break the large bill for such a small purchase, and instead he told me to go ahead and take the goods–maybe a dollar’s worth – and I could pay “next time.”

    “Tomorrow,” I agreed, thanking him, and left.

    The next day I was in, again buying something small, and as I put my money down on the counter for him, I added in the amount I owed him. He pushed those coins back at me, smiling shyly, repeating the price for today’s purchase. I reminded him I owed him from yesterday, thinking maybe he had forgotten. He smiled kindly and just replied, “Next time.”

    This ritual continued for a few weeks. I’d come in and buy something, try to give him what I owed, and he’d just smile and shake his head, “next time.”

    The summer didn’t last. Israel started bombing Lebanon and Syria. Everything exploded. Ghassan, ever the smiling cipher, had a Hizbullah flag hanging outside his window – as did most of the businesses and some of the homes in the Christian quarter. A photography studio across the street exhibited big pictures of Bashar al-Assad and Hasan Nusrullah (the leader of Hizbullah) in the window as well.

    Damascus was still relatively safe even as refugees poured in from Lebanon; nevertheless our program managers and bosses recommended we all leave, and offered to pay our bills to get home early. The nascent war had jammed up flights going West, so for me and my colleagues, this meant we could get paid to take the Long Way Home. A couple guys went to Cairo for a few weeks. My office-mate went to the Gulf to get a head start on some dissertation research. I was going to take the train to Istanbul and hang out for a while before flying home.
    So on my last day in Damascus, I stopped in Ghassan’s shop to buy some almonds for the bus ride to Aleppo, where I’d pick up the train to Istanbul. Again we did our routine.

    I put extra money on the counter, and he pushed it back to me, refraining, “Next time.”

    “I owe you this money, but you keep saying ‘next time,’ “ I replied.

    “Yes, and you keep coming back? I’m a smart businessman, no?” he laughed.

    I laughed, too, and pushed the money back across the counter. “But I’m leaving tomorrow because of the war, and I owe you this.”

    His smile fell, but he pushed the money back to me, saying, “Next time, God willing.” He put his hand on his heart, adding, “Safe journey, my friend.”

    “God willing,” I repeated, with a lump in my throat, taking my almonds and Ghassan’s money, and left.

  • “Gridiron Glory” by guest reg I Bleed Navy and Orange

    “Gridiron Glory” by guest reg I Bleed Navy and Orange

    It was the last football play of my life.

    I knew it would be my last game; I saw no future in it for me – only finality.  We were a sub-500 Division III team ending the season on a low note. So deeper meaning largely escaped me.

    With less than 3 minutes to go, we were down 20-3, and the other team had all their subs, scrubs, and seniors playing instead of their starters. In the defensive huddle, our SAM spit blood onto the ground. He had lost his mouthguard a few plays back and bit his lip during a tackle. I remember pulling my foot out of the way; for some reason I didn’t want to get my weathered shoe bloody. We broke the huddle and I laughed at myself: why should I care? I was going to throw those cleats away before nightfall.

    The offense lined up in an inverted wishbone. I was Rover–a strong safety who could line up in a number of different places, depending on the offensive formation and down/distance. Our SAM set up on the inside shoulder of the tight end, acting like he was going to rush. I bounced around his outside shoulder a yard off the line, faking like I would blitz, too. The QB took the snap and after a half step forward, the SAM and I both dropped into coverage–he dropped to his hook zone, and I zoomed toward the flat.

    Sure enough, the tight end looked to block someone, but no one was engaged with him. The offensive line stuttered, then let the defensive rush through. The strong-side halfback snuck forward, and I felt like the rest of my team knew with as much certainty as I exactly where the ball was going.

    The backup playing QB didn’t have a speck of dirt or grass stain on his uniform, and for all I know hadn’t played in a game before this one. He was hyped up, and his pass rainbowed way too high, over halfback and over even the linemen setting the center screen. Our SAM caught the overthrow against his shoulderpad, took one step and caught the arm of one of the offensive linemen, who was diving to make the tackle.

    I knew that fireplug of a SAM, all 5’10” and maybe 230lbs, could break that arm tackle. The play had started from about their 20 yard line; there was a chance we could actually score on defense! one last burst of glory. I saw the tight-end in his pristine jersey, still not engaged with anyone, and knew my SAM would need help getting past. I ran to block so my SAM could score.

    I popped the tight-end and tried to drive him as  I felt my cleats catch in the cold turf. In spots, the mud was half-frozen and plastic.

    And then my SAM broke the tackle, but not clean. He fell into my right leg. All 230 lbs of him, right into the side of my knee. Somehow everything was moving slowly enough that I felt him hit, and knew the only way I wouldn’t blow my knee out would be to collapse it, so I did.

    But my cleats were stuck in the mud and grass, and could not release–especially with my weight, the goon tight end’s weight, and now 230 lbs of linebacker pushing everything down.

    I felt the bones grinding together in my ankle and screamed, but that didn’t help, and the pain didn’t end. What I remember the most was the feeling of tension–of things being pushed and pulled in ways they aren’t supposed to go–and a grinding that sounded in my brain like massive stone blocks being dragged over each other. I remember squeezing my eyes shut and seeing bright red against the backs of my eyelids, despite the late-afternoon shadows on the field.

    The next thing I knew, I was crawling off the field, refusing to look back. I was certain my foot had been ripped off my leg, and at best was dragging behind me by my sock… but more likely, it had been pulled clean off and was still stuck in the turf. The pain was immense, but the fear was even bigger. How long before the amputated foot couldn’t be reattached?

    I got to the sideline and I guess I was whimpering something about my foot being gone, and before the trainers got to me, someone told me no, everything’s still attached.

    “Is it hanging there limp?” I asked, still not bearing to look.

    No, they reassured me. Looks like it’s pointing the right direction and everything.

    The trainers got me into a seated position and I risked a look. It was already swelling, and they cut my shoe off, but it didn’t look as hideous as it had felt when it happened. It was bad–very bad–but I wasn’t going to lose my foot.

    I didn’t find out until much later that the interception had been for nothing. The game ended 20-3.

    For years, I avoided the fate my original ortho predicted–that the bone was degenerating and within 10 years I would need my lower leg unzipped from both sides and a graft from my hip put into the tibia.

    But this past spring, my new ankle doc gave me the bad news from a new MRI. Next week I get a bone graft in the talus, and cadaver cartilage to replace all the stuff that got ground away 33 years ago.

    This is the price we pay for fleeting glory on the gridiron – in a forgotten game at the end of a meaningless career, on a frozen field. The last time I took off my helmet wasn’t some moment of meaning that I kept crystallized in my memory; I tore it off and tossed it aside while injured and never saw it again.

    My buddy and I had a saying: “broken bones heal; pain is temporary; chicks dig guys with scars.” I add another one to the collection in June.

  • “Mexico is Raw” by guest reg Hippy

    “Mexico is Raw” by guest reg Hippy

    Mexico is raw. 

    Dusk urgency had us loading the van. 

    Not a good plan to drive at night type urgency

    I was to blame. I wouldn’t come in. 

    The jungle, when lush, is amazing; it’s like a green canopy creating a tunnel as high as the highest truck that prunes it over the two lane highway.. 

    We pulled through La Union and hit a checkpoint at the Troncones turn off. 

    “Dude, we are next to a Pemex”

    “Saw it, Fuck”

    You can’t turn around and have them follow you. If they control the national petrol station… That’s not the Military. 

    The Cartel monitors the highway because of business competition, not surf tourism, but that is not reassuring with automatic rifles and hard stares focused on your arrival to their open court. 

    “CHEEEEECagO” was all he said. I was wearing a Bear hat. 

    I took off my sunglasses and placed them of the brim of my hat, blocking the iconic “C” on my “lucky” Bear hat

    We were searched and my new name was Cheeeeeecago. 

    “¿Donde esta tu mota ?” 

    “No fumar”

    He didn’t believe me. We handed over our identification. Photocopies. We’ve been through this before, and there’s always money hidden inside the photo copies. 

    The feeling of being shaken down never becomes normal because there is no normal on a jungle highway. 

    Quick glance. Our “military” checkpoint did not issue military boots; they were all wearing tennis shoes. Not good. 

    What would it take to acquire Military issue uniforms?  

    The soldier in front of me with the assault rifle lingering much too close motioned to move over beyond the open door of our van. 

    As I moved, the reflections of an approaching semi truck illuminated the highway canopy and headed southbound towards our location. 

    That is when I noticed a sniper pad above us on the lush jungle headland and heard their whistles… They wanted us to move along.

    Their target was arriving.   

    The gun now faced me and his wide smile reminded me that he held the cards. 

    “Vamanos CHEEEECAGO”

    As he motioned for us to leave, he reached for my head and removed my sunglasses. He placed them on his face and smiled even wider…”Cheeeeeeeecgao”

    We drove past the highway fire pits and guns and suddenly resumed our hunger

    “You’re lucky he didn’t take your lucky Bears’ hat” was all Danny said. 

    I thought he was reaching for my hat. 

  • “Takeaways from the Bears’ offensive line extensions” by guest reg Rob

    “Takeaways from the Bears’ offensive line extensions” by guest reg Rob

    What should we make of the Bears’ decision to offer contract extensions to guards Joe Thuney and Jonah Jackson?

    Ben Johnson wants continuity on his offensive line.

    Well, the Bears mostly have it now. Outside of left tackle, the Bears’ line, barring a major injury this year, is pretty much set for 2026. This may fall into the “give Caleb everything he needs” category, but it may also be an indicator that Johnson is looking beyond 2025 in terms of when the Bears may peak (assuming Caleb Williams is a legitimate QB).

    The team has some cover for left tackle

    If we can pencil in two solid seasons from Joe Thuney (Pro Bowl seasons would be a welcome surprise at his age), the Bears have some flexibility to try their hand at left tackle. Perhaps Braxton Jones benefits from some stability. If Kiran Amegadjie or Ozzy Trapilo is the starter on day one, the Bears have a veteran presence on the left side for multiple years to allow their new left tackle to learn and develop. The same applies if the Bears choose a left tackle in the ’26 draft.

    The Bears are narrowing down their needs in the ’26 draft…for now at least

    Setting aside the foolishness of talking about the ’26 draft before the ’25 season has commenced, the Bears may be able to focus on LT in the draft knowing that the rest of the line is set, with center/guard addressed in the ’27 draft.

    Ben Johnson might really like Jackson and Thuney

    We basically must hope this is the case. The contract extension for Jackson borders on lunacy – Jackson’s ’26 cap hit has been reported as the highest of any guard, having never come remotely closely to playing at such a stature. With that said, Jackson’s age makes him ripe for a contract extension that could reduce his cap hit in ’26.

  • “This Time, It Feels Different” by guest reg Rob

    “This Time, It Feels Different” by guest reg Rob

    One of the stranger aspects of Bears’ fandom since the Lovie Smith era has been the Bears’ general draft strategy. We witnessed two reset-the-franchise picks under Ryan Pace (Trubisky, Fields) mixed in with aggressively trading away draft picks as if the team were just a player or two away from contender status. It was an odd but telling combination for one of the worst teams in football over the past decade.

    Ryan Poles has reversed some of those trends – the Bears have held more than the standard seven draft picks in three of his four drafts – but his first two years at the helm still saw the Bears treading a familiar path, selecting five defensive players out of seven total picks in the first three rounds.

    We all knew what was coming in ’24, but for me, the 2025 draft comes as a revelation in the wake of Bears history – in my 31 years of Bears’ fandom, I cannot recall a draft approach quite like this one.

    First, some historical notes: since the modern-day seven round draft commenced in 1993, the Bears have selected offensive players with their first three picks seven times (which surprised me). The 2024 and ’25 drafts mark the first time in the modern draft era in which the Bears drafted three offensive players at the top of the draft in back-to-back year.

    This offense-first draft focus in back-to-back years is extremely rare for the Bears in the overall history of the NFL draft.  Only the 1945-46 drafts and the 1941, ’42 and ’43 drafts saw the Bears select three offensive players at the top of each draft (position names back then are a bit wonky, so forgive me if I got that wrong).

    Pro Football Reference has all the gory details, like the cherished 1997 draft that brought TE John Allred, G Bob Sapp and RB Darnell Autry to the Bears with their first three selections.

    But back to the hopefully good stuff of ’25:

    • While the Colston Loveland pick has its critics (preference for Warren, too high of a selection for a TE), we should appreciate this pick for its glass-breaking novelty. The Bears have a solid TE under contract (Cole Kmet), and they went out and picked another one anyways! Perhaps this is foolish for a 5-win team, but have we ever seen such an attitude from the Bears? The only comparison I can think of was the selection of Cedric Benson in ’05 with Thomas Jones under contract.
    • The selection of Luther Burden follows a similar trend. Olamide Zaccheaus is a perfectly acceptable football player and slot receiver. In virtually any other era of Bears football, the Bears would have been “set” at WR going into the draft. And yet, the Bears aimed to improve a critical position group in the modern game.
    • Ozzy Trapilo once again breaks the mold. The Bears have an offensive line that, on paper, is at least OK. The Bears even have a developmental tackle with real draft capital in Kiran Amegadjie. For the first time in a very long time, “OK” and “let’s start Arlington Hambright” is no longer good enough for the offensive line.

    Of course, bucking history only has value as a narrative. The draft is an annual crapshoot, and Loveland, Burden and Trapiilo may all bust. But for at least a brief moment, Bears fans should savor the feeling that the franchise is, for once, trying a different approach.

  • Bears Rising: written by guest Reg Michael Blades

    Bears Rising: written by guest Reg Michael Blades

    After 44 years of fandom, I attended my first in-person Bears game In 2018, purchasing tickets for the Rams-Bears tilt I knew would be both meaningful and cold, after learning of the Khalil Mack trade, a sure sign that these Bears with their visored offensive egghead would climb to the mountaintop once again, while shedding the preposterousness of the recent Trestman and Fox regimes.  I had gambled correctly, and the four tickets I got for my son and his Rams-loving friend (and me and his step-mother) climbed steeply on Stubhub as the season moved from autumn to winter and the Rams and Bears appeared on a collision course for Conference supremacy.  The week running up to the game, it was flexed to Sunday night, and the forecast called for a brutally cold Chicago December night, prompting whispers from my wife that the $75 dollar tickets could be offloaded for triple their face, and we discussed the possibility of watching from the comfort of our family room in Skokie, warm beneath the throws with cheap(er) drinks in our hands and chili on the stove.  The experience was too strong to wave away with comfort. My son commented that this could really be a new Bears team and this game could be a dynasty harbinger; it cemented our resolve to brave the elements and watch the Beloved live and in person beneath the sharp, crisp lights of a winter’s night.

    On game day we snowmobile bundled in thickly lined boots and snow pants, layering undershirts and wool sweaters beneath mountain parkas stuffed with “hot hands”, wearing hats that clung to the ears.  Driving to the millennium lot beneath Grant Park, we were stuffed in like a bag of cotton balls, shoulders pushing out, cushioned against the doors.  Spilling out of the car, we took the long walk through Grant Park sidling along the unshirted yahoos, hatted and gloved and drunk, and as we approached the stadium beneath the tunnel at Roosevelt, the brightly lit Soldier Field rose into the starred sky.  I was not regretting the trek nor the cold. The energy for this Bears team felt like 2006 again. I thought back on taking my 4 year old son to the Candlelite on the North side to watch them dispose of the Payton Saints, a clash of offensive creativity and defensive stability, while he ate pizza and became a Bears fan at the same age I became one, wearing the Hester t-shirt jersey I had bought him for the occasion.  

    I have a few regrets in the 12 years between that game and this, and the situation had shifted from mom to step-mom, but the bond between us felt strong that night.  We sat in the South end zone with a view of the action that allowed us to see plays develop across the field, watching Mack stalk Goff with a predator’s rage and hunger, seeing our cagey veteran DC dismantle the boy genius McVay.  A deep playoff run was certain; the curtain had risen for this cast of young offensive and defensive stars and a coach who pumped the blood of the new NFL, what Mad Hatter Trestman was supposed to be, and a foil to the checked-out and somnambulistic Fox.  The wail of the third down siren and the panicked Goff papered over Trubisky’s 3 interception night; these Bears were real, we thought,  and the marching faithful returning to their vehicles chanted “Green Bay Sucks” with the fervor of an armed mob looking to draw, quarter and put to rest any thought that Aaron Rodgers would continue to reign over the NFC North.   They ran out that season with defining wins over the Pack, the Niners, and the Vikings, a three game parade over our most hated rivals until coming to a halt in a most Bears way with the belt of history pulling strongly around our coach’s neck, visor unable to hide his incredulous gape, as Staley toppled sideways to the Soldier Field turf.

    The next couple of years saw missteps and finger pointing, with Nagy unable to rekindle the pilot light of his vision, and my son, getting older, piled more resentment and anger onto his stepmom and myself, eventually coming back from his first year of college during the autumn of COVID, and deciding to live exclusively with his mother.  The strings of that relationship snapped over the next year as did the Bears and Nagy,  and more incompetence emerged through 2 ½ years of Eberflus. Eventually the communication between my son and I ceased.  I have not spoken with him for 3 and a half years.

    With the optimistic hire of a new messiah, and the passing of another Easter without reconciliation and redemption, my hope for the seeds of another draft to sprout and flourish moves lockstep with that same hope for my son and me.  Maybe this year we will build something with a rock mantle foundation, with the base to support the winds and storms of passion.  All I wish for is a hot bowl of chili, a cold Old Fashioned, and the warmth of an afternoon game next to him and beside my wife, as the Bears march forcefully down the field.