How’s everyone’s weekend going?
Thanks for spending a portion of your Sunday with the Six.
Let’s get right to it.
OPTIMISM AND CONDEMNATION, ALL AT ONCE
Thursday night, the Chicago Bears introduced its latest franchise savior.
While it will be a few years before a full evaluation of Caleb Williams is due, there’s a greater chance than not he’ll become another undeveloped quarterback who doesn’t live up to his draft position. The flame out rate is high with newbie professional quarterbacks and the fact Williams will be in Chicago, home of decades upon decades of piteous offensive play, makes it impossible to make any other football prediction about the pick.
But optimism about one’s football team typically peaks right after the draft, so let’s indulge the emotion, stop and smell the roses a bit, shall we? With the top pick and a stable of other young players, the Bears just may keep Chicagoans interested in pro football well into December and the holidays. As a long suffering fan of the Washington Redskins (sorry, Commanders are characters in Battlestar Galactica, not the name of a football team) I feel the pain of irrelevance, just as Bears fans do.
The draft being this week is why I found it curious Bears officials chose the day before (Wednesday) to roll out their new stadium plan. Why supplant the built-in hype of a globalized sports festival like the NFL Draft with a press conference to pitch a billion dollar monolith on the lakefront?
Now I know. Because the stadium plan is dead on arrival. The Bears need the draft as a distraction.
From the event’s bizarre opening prayer circle, through the final interviews with key personnel involved in the plan, the proposed stadium/land development project was resoundly denounced by local media.
We’re used to group think when it comes to the Chicago press corps. They serve and protect the corrupt bureaucrats in the city rather than cover them with the healthy dose of dubious skepticism they deserve. But this time, the shared outrage from legacy outfits is justified.
If a resident of the city of Chicago, county of Cook or state Illinois, here’s the only bit of information needed to dismiss the idea: taxpayers will at a minimum have to cough up $2.4 billion dollars for the domed stadium. Oh, and the last iteration of Solider Field, the upgrades completed 20 years ago? Over half a billion remains unpaid on those bonds.
There’s kicking the can down the road and then there’s the Chicago Way of doing business.
The Bears, of course, ignored those inconvenient truths and attempted to evangelize about the development’s “public investment” and how the plan would “reinvigorate the entire city of Chicago” and be the city’s “crown jewel.”
I understand Bears President Kevin Warren spewing such bull jive. He works for a private entity where profits trump civic responsibility.
But the ephemeral quotes listed above were spoken by the city’s Hustler-In-Chief, Brandon Johnson.
Imagine for a moment other people’s money were spinach. Johnson is Popeye, gobbling up bills of dead presidents like the comic book character did the green vegetable. Popeye used spinach as rocket fuel towards a noble feat. Johnson sees public money as a drug to propel him and all cultish believers into his fantasy vision of Chicago. You know, the one where money grows on trees.
Famous alternate reality philosopher Timothy Leary once said the end game to LSD—after the “turn on” and “tune in” phase—was to “drop out.” That’s just what happened to the Daniel Burnham-inspired narrative of the proposed stadium idea as soon as details were made public.
The Chicago Tribune rightfully called out Johnson for him leveraging the Bears as a means of personal brand public relations repair rather than doing what’s best for the city:
Johnson, badly struggling in the first year of his term by any reasonable definition, looks to us like he’s picked this majestic facility on the lakefront, not to mention the intensity of Bears Fandom, to pull his mayorality out of the ditch.
The Score, the three-decades plus Chicago sports radio station, went in hot against the proposal, unified in their distrust.
Mid-day hosts Dan Bernstein and Lawrence Holmes correctly went after Johnson and city officials for their unsophisticated grasp of the current environment in the Chicago:
Said Bernstein:
I’m just seething about this whole thing, I’m seething about it. And they’re going to get idiots – ‘Oh, look at the renderings, this is going to be awesome, yay football, yay football!’ This is real money, these are real people. We’re talking about our lakefront, and they want to plop another giant concrete blob down there to do what?
Said Holmes:
All of this money is still going to be in the state of Illinois. There’s almost no reason the public should do the bidding – and I mean both that figuratively and literally – for Kevin Warren and the Bears.
Other editorials in daily newspapers were critical of the stadium plan.
This letter to the editor from Linda in Chicago sums up fan sentiment:
If the Bears would all the money and effort into playing the game of football instead of trying to build a stadium, a lot more of their dreams would come true.
Well said, Linda.
I think we can all agree the Bears made a major step forward this week in the winning games department. They’ll likely field a more competitive team in 2024.
As for the new stadium using public money idea? Hell no. For once, we’ve found a subject where we can all agree.
Let’s proceed with the Six.
1. Breaking Down The Politics Of The Stadium Proposal.
So we analyzed the media narrative around the stadium project. What about the politicians who hold the public money purse strings? They are less than thrilled. The Bears say they want the money sooner than later but based on comments by Illinois Governor JB Pritzker and other legislative leaders, it ain’t gonna happen. This article via The Pantagraph breaks it all down from Springfield.
2. Why NFL Draftees Chose To Stay Home.
The NFL Draft is now, in 2024, more sports rock festival than hiring event for professional football. Historically, the draft involves high level prospects actually going to the location, this year held in Detroit. Their appearance always makes for great television not only when the prospect is picked, holds up the jersey of his new team and slap hands with NFL commish Roger Goodell. There’s also the compelling theater of the athletes when not picked. It appears that downside risk has spooked more and more prospects every year, and last night only 13 players went to Detroit, down from 17 players last year and 22 players two years ago. Some of that may have to do with being in Detroit in April—other than Miami, let’s say—but that’s pure speculation.
The chaos on campuses these past few weeks has shined a light once again on the value of elite, private educations. What exactly are they teaching these students? Not discernment or the ability see both sides of an argument, apparently. As a proud graduate of a state school (Michigan State…go green!) I enjoyed this piece from Nate Silver’s Silver Bulletin newsletter. Silver makes the argument that sure, there are circumstances where a Princeton or Dartmouth education can make a difference. But more often than not, a public, state college will be just as valuable: “I expect the decline in perceptions of elite private colleges to extend to people tasked with making hiring decisions. I expect an increasing number of hiring managers to look at two resumes — say, one from a recent graduate of Columbia, and one from a recent graduate of the University of the North Carolina — and potentially see advantages for the UNC student.”
4. Inside the White House, New York Times Feud.
There’s a popular belief that the heritage brand New York Times is a comm shop for the Democratic Party. While the editorial page is bereft of any balance, its news division is not always in bed with the Biden White House (I’d call it more anti-Trump than pro-Biden). This story in Politico reveals a real squabble between both camps. From the article: “the relationship between the Democratic president and the country’s newspaper of record — for years the epitome of a liberal press in the eyes of conservatives — remains remarkably tense, beset by misunderstandings, grudges and a general lack of trust.” Well, then. And Trump has nothing to do with it (maybe).
5. The Rise Of The Bee Bandits.
Once the American West was rife with cattle rustlers. Now thieves pilfer bee hives. Over 2,000 have already been stolen this year. Yes, the hives have value when trucked into California from all over the country to pollinate almond trees. Heists go unnoticed due to haphazard unloading and logistical confusion (how does law enforcement recognize a hive theft?) This article from an outlet called Noema finds a local sheriff described as a "steely sort of bee detective" but admits he’s struggling to regain control of the situation. A fascinating read about a niche criminal enterprise most of us never would have believe existed.
Happy with the news this week that the Rock Hall—the museum that’s supposed to honor rock music—voted in an actual rock n’ roll band, Foreigner. Does a week go by when we don’t hear one of their classic songs somewhere? In an ode to an era when concert videos were a thing, this is one of the band’s best. “Standing in the rain, with his head hung low…couldn't get a ticket, it was a sold out show…” Great band, great songs. Hail Foreigner, one of the G.O.A.T's.
Thanks for reading everybody and have a great rest of your weekend.
Have a suggestion for The Sunday Six? Send email to jonjkerr@gmail.com.