Bear Down

About six weeks ago, I wrote that the Chicago Bears were so dismal this year and were being so massively embarrassed on national television against their rivals the Green Bay Packers that I had sent an email to a friend at halftime that the team should fire the coach before they left the locker room.  And I am not someone who tends to call for the head of the coach when a team is doing poorly.  (I follow the Cubs and Northwestern sports.  Doing poorly comes with the territory.)  But the Bears looked clueless even in the pre-season exhibition games.

It only took six additional weeks, but yesterday the team not only fired their coach, but also the General Manager.  The Bears historically don't do this, but keep their coaches through the run of their contracts, if not beyond.  And I never recall them firing both the coach and GM at the same time.

There was a moment at the press conference yesterday that got a lot of national attention. It was when team president George McCaskey (grandson of former team owner/coach/and player, the legendary George Halas), said with great emphasis how "pissed off" his 91-year-old mother, Virginia McCasky, daughter of Halas, and still the team's principal owner, was. 

My favorite exchange was with a friend who's a big Bears fan, though who I refer to as Mr. Sunshine.  He sent me a note after the firing that basically said -- and I'm not exaggerating -- that although he Bears just made a significant change that needed to be made, and which he'd been pushing to be made, “We’re doomed.”  And if the Bears hadn’t made the change, he absolutely who have moaned, “We’re doomed.”  And when running through the list of experienced coaches the Bears could hire, wrote,  “We’re doomed.”  And if it turned out that they hire an up-and-coming inexperienced coach, for certain, "We're doomed.

By the way, he almost hates the team's quarterback Jay Cutler and wants him gone...

I wrote back:  "Methinks your hatred of Jay Cutler has been put in the proper Mr. Sunshine context."

To his credit, he wrote back.

"You're right.

"And we're doomed."

Note:  people take their sports seriously in Chicago...