If you are okay with the Chicago Bears Moving to Hammond, Indiana, you have definitely never been to the Hammond-East Chicago (IN)-Gary area, which I can tell you I *have* been to many times...
...both in my waking hours and in my nightmares.
This decision to move is *obscene*.
This is NOT a failure for the state of Illinois. Stop. Giving. Billionaires. Handouts.
The lawmakers in Indiana are happy to sell out their taxpayers for a stadium that doesn’t bear their name and won’t ever recoup the millions they’ll spend to build and maintain it.
Everyone likes to shit on Chicago politics and rightfully so. But ultimately, the Bears look silly here. The Chicago Bears playing home games at a hazardous waste site over the Indiana border is comical. It will damage their brand.
If the Bears do leave Illinois, so many STH will leave.
3 hours of travel total to and from Hammond with gas at all time highs, you then have a $8 toll each way on the Skyway and then paid parking and then just going to the game?
They’re about to price out so many longtime fans
Indianapolis, the largest city in a state with a metro population of 2.2 million, gets just three trains per week, yet that same state is willing to spend $1 billion on a football stadium for 8 events a year.
Indiana taxpayers are on the hook for Lucas Oil Stadium until 2037…. And they’re willing to slap another stadium over there that 90% of the state won’t visit.
Insanity.
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 — requiring team owners to offer locals the chance to buy a team before moving it away.
@ChicagoBears Will Madden change their cover now that it's the Hammond Bears? Or the Indiana Bears? I love the bears but I aint driving to Indiana. IL Politicians quite literally dropped the ball here
I’ll say it until I’m blue in the face, taxpayers should not have to kick in a dime on these stadium projects. If you can’t afford to build one as an owner, maybe you shouldn’t own the team.