One mayoral candidate has suggested that, if the Bears abandon Chicago for Arlington Heights, the city should renovate Soldier Field and lease it to another NFL team. Another with deeper pockets has talked about buying a team and making the 99-year-old stadium its home. And Mayor Lori Lightfoot has said, “There’s plenty of cities that have two NFL teams.’’
Is revenge a good enough reason to want a second franchise in Chicago?
After what Bears ownership has put the city through, after all the losing and all the ineptitude, yes.
The chances of another team moving to Chicago seem slim on the surface. The Jaguars often are brought up as a possibility because owner Shahid Khan has an engineering degree from the University of Illinois and because, well, Jacksonville. As much as we sports sophisticates might think a move to Chicago is obvious, the challenge of relocating an NFL franchise to a city that has a deeply entrenched team – and succeeding – would be a major challenge.
And no matter how much mayoral candidate Willie Wilson is worth – the Internet says $25 million – and no matter how much the NFL would like an African-American owning a team, allowing someone to invade the territory of one of the league’s original franchises isn’t the kind of business that commissioner Roger Goodell usually dabbles in. All he seems to care about is massive new stadiums, the kind the Bears are planning on the site of the former Arlington International Racecourse. The kind that makes billions of dollars for its owners.
But Chicago is big enough for two teams. Gambling money is going to bring more money to the NFL, which very well could lead to league expansion. Why not here? Why not an AFC team to compete with the NFC Bears? It’s worked in New York and Los Angeles.
It sure would be nice if someone made the McCaskey family pay for all the bad football they’ve brought to the city. I won’t depress you with the long list of Bears’ lows. I won’t tell you that the team hasn’t won a playoff game since the 2010 season. I won’t tell you that after inheriting a talented team that went on to win a Super Bowl in 1985, Virginia McCaskey’s franchise has made the playoffs just seven times in the past 28 years. I won’t tell you that the hated Packers have made the playoffs 21 times in the same span.
I won’t tell you any of this because the sun hasn’t shone nearly enough the past two weeks and you’re already in the fetal position.
I don’t mean to be dismissive of the accomplishment of winning a Super Bowl, even though the McCaskeys had very little to do with putting that team together. But it was 37 years ago, folks. As in, four decades ago. With a salary cap in place since 1994, giving each NFL team the same amount of money to spend, the Bears’ lack of success is even more glaring and more appalling.
So, revenge. Or anger. Or spite. Whatever you want to call it, if it makes you yearn for another team to move into Soldier Field to give the McCaskeys a run for their considerable money, it’s valid.
A new stadium for the Bears seems like a foregone conclusion, especially after listening to new team president Kevin Warren talk about the project at his introductory press conference Tuesday. (By the way, Betty White never got as royal a treatment as this guy is getting.) There’s no doubt wide-eyed Bears fans are going to sprint to the shiny bauble in Arlington Heights when it opens. They look at the state-of-the-art stadiums that have risen in Los Angeles and Las Vegas the past few years and dream of a similar game-day experience.
I’m here to remind them that a game-day experience brought to you by the McCaskeys involves more losing than winning. It doesn’t involve the playoffs in any meaningful way.
What would happen if another franchise made Soldier Field its home and did the unimaginable by winning a Super Bowl? My guess is that many Bears fans are so true to their team that they couldn’t fathom switching allegiances. But there certainly are many others who are so fed up with the lack of success from the team and the poor decisions in hiring coaches and general managers that they’d be willing to change sides. This is a large city with more NFL fans than available Bears tickets.
There would be no reason for a Cubs/White Sox split, with one team being much more popular than the other. Everything the NFL touches turns to gold. The problem, of course, is that much of the gold comes from taxpayers. There isn’t an appetite these days for public money going into a private enterprise. The Bears say they’ll shoulder most of the burden of building the Arlington Heights stadium, but anyone with common sense and a knowledge of history knows that these deals rarely end up in favor of the citizens.
While we’re imagining a second team in Chicago, we can also fantasize that Khan, who’s worth an estimated $11.7 billion, will put a dome on Soldier Field with his own money. Hey, a city can dream, can’t it?
Here’s reality: The McCaskeys haven’t had a good reason to be good owners. Their profits are built in. Loyalists get angry at the lack of winning but keep buying tickets. There isn’t a fire under the family. There’s a cushion.
Bears fans shouldn’t have to put up with this. But they do because the NFL is great entertainment and because they’re afraid they’ll miss something if they look away. So team officials can sell the fanbase on hope, on the idea that Justin Fields is going to be a star and on the notion that having the top overall pick in the 2023 draft means the franchise is going places. It’s always something.
Wouldn’t it be nice if there were an alternative?
