In Our Time

Dick Butkus is Ernest Hemingway in pads and helmet. I doubt #51 has ever wasted a word in his life. Butkus has been at Super Bowl activities this week in Phoenix. He told Patrick Finley in today’s Sun-Times of walking into the offices of George Halas to tell Papa Bear he, Halas, didn’t want to win. “He got up, and I thought he was going to take a poke at me,” Butkus recalled of that incident back in 1971. And, how did the old man meet Butkus’ challenge to find a winning coach to replace the fired Jim Dooley? Why, by hiring Abe Gibron, who went a woeful 11-24 in three years at the helm. Truly, the McCaskeys did not fall far from the tree. You have to wonder if the family will be holding a seat for Butkus should the Bears build their new stadium in Arlington Heights, not after he said, “Look at the teams that are winning, and look at their organization. The ownership is the ones that hire. It starts from [and with] them, too. They shouldn’t be void of [immune from] any criticism.” Bet Virginia McCaskey and her boys loved reading that. Speaking of a new stadium, Finley also did a story on how State Farm Stadium in suburban Phoenix, home of the Cardinals and site of this year’s Super Bowl, could serve as a model for what the Bears want to do in Arlington Heights. Not a word on how the facility was financed—the public picked up a majority of the cost—but a whole lot of gushing on how an “economic ecosystem has developed around” the site. This is why you don’t let sportswriters cover stadium stories—they’re clueless. Reading Finley, you’d never know two school districts have hired lobbyists to make sure they don’t get taken to the cleaners by the Bears looking for handouts down in Springfield. And you won’t see a word about how different the Glendale and Arlington Heights sites are. The one caused development to follow it, the other is an old racetrack surrounded by development. Finley’s “economic ecosystem” looks like more of an economic parasite to me.