Art Modell ring a bell? How about Clay Bennett? Or John Fisher? Or Bud Adams?
I swear, you sound like a moron who went to some little farm school which "identifies" as a major university in Ames...
Billionaire team owners keep getting richer while fans keep getting screwed.
It's why the Bears may leave Chicago.
It's also why @SenSanders and I introduced the Home Team Act β requiring team owners to offer locals the chance to buy a team before moving it away.
@JobberNationTV@BleacherReport IDK... Wemby's been in the league, what, 2-3 years?
How long did it take Michael Jordan to win his first title?
Or LeBron?
And, the last time I checked, teams will likely be flying into and out of O'Hare (I doubt Gary airport's runways could support 777s/787s/A350s etc ... and likely staying in a hotel in The Loop.
If the Bears do move to Indiana, the impact on Chicago and Illinois will be minimal. There isn't a huge direct economic impact from Bears games, and the city's status and reputation are not tied to having the team.
@HausenKS A better analogy would be the Giants and Jets leaving New York City for New Jersey back in the day.
At least the Chiefs are still technically going to be in Kansas City, but KC, Kansas, not Missouri.
@DanhausenAD is so evil, he's making me do something I never thought I'd be doing in my lifetime...
He's got me rooting for the Knicks to win a championship.
This, of course, presumes that Lake Michigan won't freeze over to the point where the Blackhawks could play a game on said lake without crashing through the ice.
Hear me outβ¦
A fleet of Bears-themed water taxis that double as floating sports bars, shuttling fans from downtown Chicago to Hammond, Indiana on game days.
Cold beer. Tailgating on the water. No traffic.
Chicago lost the Bears this week. A team that's been in the city since 1921.
They didn't lose them to a bigger market or a better deal. The Bears decided they'd rather be a tenant in Indiana than deal with Illinois for one more year.
Think about how badly you have to run a place for that to be the smart move.
They lost them for two reasons.
The people running Illinois would rather villainize a builder than keep one. And they're bad at their jobs.
In 2021 the Bears spent $197M on the old Arlington Park racetrack.
Before they could break ground, Cook County valued the empty lot at $192M (Bears said $60M). They were salivating at the chance to extort a building that didn't even exist yet.
That fight dragged on for years.
The Bears were ready to put $2B into the stadium. All they wanted was a promise the county wouldn't reassess them into oblivion, plus $855M for infrastructure everyone uses. Roads, transit, utilities. A $3B project, two thirds of it private money pouring into Illinois.
Springfield had since 2021 to get this done. They dragged it to the final night of session, passed it through the Senate at 3:39AM, and the House went home without voting.
So now it's all gone.
The funniest part? This started because Cook County tried to grab the tax early. They knew a built stadium would pay $53M a year. Now they get under $4M on a vacant lot. No jobs, no buildout, no new anything.
Congrats on fighting for scraps and losing the whole prize.
Pritzker: they're "an $8.5B valued business" that doesn't need propping up.
But be smart for a second. Almost every NFL city throws in public money for a stadium. Not charity. The return is real. Tourism, hotels, restaurants, jobs, game days, property tax on a huge development. The math works.
Indiana did the math. While Illinois sat on it for years, Indiana passed a bill in months, put up $1B, and took the team.
And the Bears took a worse deal to get there. In Illinois they were going to own their stadium. In Indiana they rent it from the state. A team that wanted to build its own home gave up ownership just to escape Chicago.
Nobody won but Indiana. The Bears lost their stadium. Illinois lost the team, the $2B, and $53M a year in taxes.
Pritzker after they left: "I wasn't willing to give up billions of dollars of taxpayer money to give it to a billionaire-owned family or team."
There it is. "Billionaire-owned."
That's how Democrats talk about any business right before they run it out of town. Call them a billionaire, act like you're saving working families, take a victory lap while the tax base drives across the state line.
Meanwhile they're running the whole state into the ground. And you already know how this ends. You're living in it.
Pensions are $143B in the hole, worst in the country and not close. You pay $6,285 a year in property taxes, double the $2,969 national average, for a city that's $1.15B in the red. The mayor called its finances "the point of no return."
When you run things this badly, you sell what's left.
They leased the parking meters for 75 years to Morgan Stanley and a sovereign wealth fund in Abu Dhabi. Took $1.15B and burned through it in two years. The investors already made it all back, with 58 years left to collect.
Sold the Skyway. Sold the downtown garages. Every asset that made money, gone for one check.
But a fixed property tax rate for a team that's been here 106 years? That's "propping up billionaires."
Companies are leaving. Boeing for Virginia. Caterpillar for Texas. Citadel for Miami. In 2023 alone Illinois lost 56,000 people and $6B in income to other states. The ones who left earned a third more than the ones who moved in.
Indiana didn't outbid anyone. AAA credit, 16 years straight. A $676M surplus. Fourth-lowest debt per person in the country. They just weren't a disaster.
Illinois could have collected $53M a year. It chose zero. Ignore all the bad management but make sure to stick it to those evil, pesky billionaires.
Never thought I'd live to see the day when an national football club arrives to the US on ... Southwest Airlines.
I just hope Mother Nature cooperates when the Czechs have their open training session in Mansfield tomorrow morning.
VΓtejte v Texasu! The @ceskarepre_eng has landed in Dallas. The Czech National Team will train in Mansfield ahead of their first World Cup match against South Korea in Guadalajara.
Gee, if only the Mavs had a certified G and a bonafide stud like Jalen Brunson on their roster...
Oh, wait.
Mavs fans have another reason to hate Nico Harrison with Brunson potentially 2 wins away from a championship ... with the freaking Knicks. #NBAFinals