A number of months earlier than I used to be born, the Chicago Bears gained the Tremendous Bowl. In doing so, they put a cherry atop their most enjoyable, storied season ever. It was such a giant deal that in my toddler years, a Richard Dent motion determine was only one piece of the ever present ‘86 Bears mythology in my family—a totem object for the start of my life—and certainly one of my very first information reminiscences is of what the Chicago Tribune regarded like on the day, years later, that head coach Mike Ditka was fired.
Thousands and thousands of Chicagolanders my age can inform comparable tales; these of residing by means of a fandom most outlined by stuff that occurred earlier than you have been alive, often punctuated by haphazardly profitable Bears groups that normally relied on turnover creation for common offensive manufacturing. We bought a Tremendous Bowl run in 2007, and whereas that was enjoyable, it was precisely this sort of ramshackle, wild-card outfit that took us there.
This previous season, a technology of Chicago followers lastly bought just a little style of what a really vital NFL group may really feel like. Caleb Williams did issues that clarified why he was essentially the most hyped quarterback prospect of the previous decade, and new head coach Ben Johnson persistently created strategic edges and cultural resilience that confirmed why he was essentially the most buzzed-about teaching prospect of current years. And that is solely the beginning. We’ve bought it made!
However at the exact same time—if this week’s developments are to be believed—we might be trying on the finish of the Bears’ time in Chicago. How merciless. After years of political and monetary energy video games, surrounded by wild concepts about city planning and improvement, all of the noise about what’s going to occur—or not—with plans for a possible new Bears stadium has reached absurd new negotiating heights: the Bears are threatening to maneuver to northwest Indiana.
In the event you’re not from right here, let’s clear one thing up: northwest Indiana is, in so some ways, Chicagoland. If your loved ones is from the south facet, it’s particularly doubtless that you just’ve identified somebody who’s crossed state traces 5 occasions every week to go work downtown. And in case you take heed to native radio, regional enterprise adverts are all the time stipulating that they additionally serve that one nook of Indiana.
There’s a distinct spirit to crossing the border, although. You do it for cheaper actual property—my mother and father lived there for a short time after they bought married, to save cash for his or her first home—or to buy at firework depots, or (earlier than we grew to become such a On line casino Nation) to go gamble. Nowadays, lots of Chicagoans drive by means of the world to hit up one of many mega-cheap weed dispensaries simply over the road into Michigan, and when doing so, they all the time discover that the roads between Illinois and Michigan are too slim and perpetually underneath development.
Maybe the proposed phrases of a Hammond, Indiana stadium assist us perceive why. If Indiana is providing a cash-cow NFL group a beneficiant heap of subsidies, and plans to take so little again in return, the place precisely will the funds for his or her huge new infrastructure wants be coming from? That doesn’t appear to be a priority for state politicians, who simply voted unanimously to approve an idea introduced with every kind of loaded phrases by Governor Mike Braun—he describes their method as “pro-growth,” and “mov[ing] on the pace of enterprise.” (Economists have broadly discredited the concept that subsidies are good enterprise for anybody however the groups who obtain them).
Braun’s language strikes at one other essential attribute of Chicagoland border-crossers: offended tax sentiment. Prickly anti-Liberal concepts are sometimes behind regional resentments like those relished by the Indiana legislature proper now, and if the Bears settle for this package deal, it will likely be an enormous win for the Chicago-hating contingent of our tri-state space (the third a part of which is Wisconsin, the place Chicago vacationers are sometimes called F.I.B.’s, or “Fucking Illinois Bastards”). The Bears shifting to Indiana would, in different phrases, imply a hell of much more than only a logistical shift.
Although the logistics can be nightmarish, too. The group’s well-known apply facility, Halas Corridor, is positioned in Lake Forest, a moneyed north shore suburb that a lot of the group’s roster and workers stay in or round. Do they actually wish to ask them to maneuver to Indiana? As a result of visitors in Chicago is a sort of hell, and I simply bought a migraine fascinated about common journeys during your complete metropolis, to finish up in Hammond, a metropolis of about 80,000 folks that may, on this situation, see their inhabitants successfully double on recreation days. They’ve nowhere close to the city bandwidth for such events, proper now.
A extra appropriate, however in its personal manner unromantic vacation spot for the Bears is the northwest suburb of Arlington Heights. On paper it’s about as large as Hammond, however as a extra direct piece of the Chicago metropolitan system, it’s much more prepared for the sort of crowds {that a} century-old franchise within the nation’s hottest sports activities league would carry. Arlington Heights has been wooing the Bears for a very long time now, and cleared the best way for a deal that’s solely being held up by the sudden seduction of Indiana’s team-friendly proposal.
Underpinning all of that is the concept that the Bears want a brand new stadium in any respect. Their insistence on one is commonly centered round the concept that an older, outside stadium in a chilly metropolis can’t host a Tremendous Bowl, however I can’t consider any Chicagoans I do know who’re longing for that to occur right here. Soldier Discipline, with its bizarre mixture of Roman Colosseum construction and Gehryesque geometric abstraction, is flawed however beloved. The Bears simply don’t prefer it as a result of they don’t personal it—the town does—and since it doesn’t provide them monetary “progress” alternatives.
One other phrase for these: authorities handouts. At a time when the state is financially crippled by President Trump’s withholding of congressionally accepted funds, it’s exceedingly callous of the Bears to weaponize the second for additional self-enrichment. Bending the state over the negotiating pike, proper now, is such a gobsmacking act of greed that if the Bears do undergo with this transfer to Indiana, I gained’t care what number of MVP trophies Caleb has collected by 2030: my fandom won’t proceed.
The cash-only logic the Bears are displaying on this state of affairs is on the coronary heart of what makes so many individuals really feel hopeless about fashionable life. Income solely go up to now earlier than they begin to defeat pleasure and objective, and the Bears might be leaving a lot of what issues about their franchise behind if all of them care about is maximally fleecing a authorities. It’s unhealthy sufficient that the group spent a lot of my life bringing the franchise wherever near the glory it had earlier than I existed. In the event that they squander the hope they’ve solely simply earned with such a cynical resolution, successful gained’t be sufficient to maintain it.
