For Your Reading Pleasure

The sports’ section in today’s Tribune has so much football news of interest I almost don’t know where to start.  But with my oft-stated fondness for the Bears, let’s begin there:  The Monsters of the Midway have announced a slight increase in ticket prices, which is what teams often do after a successful season.  Last year’s 3-13 record must qualify as a success in McCaskey Land.

The team CEO and vice-president of looking the other way wrote season-ticket holders to “Thank you for your support in 2016.  It was a challenging and disappointing season, one we will not repeat.”  Be careful what you say, my friend.  When he was hired to manage the Cubs in 1966, Leo Durocher said, “This is not an eighth place ball club,” and Leo the Lip was right.  The team slipped from eighth to tenth in his first year at the helm.  What do you think, 2-14, anybody?

The other story on the front page was more sad than anything, about former Northwestern and Bears’ player and local sportscaster Mike Adamle, who at the age of 67 is exhibiting signs of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy.  Adamle announced the diagnosis during an interview with a former colleague with Channel 5 sports, where he last worked eleven months ago.  An on-air blackout led Adamle to step down.

Adamle told a story about being on the special-teams’ unit with the Jets.  He and other players painted little rising sun flags on their chests, took a drink of saki, and went out “like kamikaze planes….We didn’t think anything about it.”  And neither did the NFL, which for years denied any connection between CTE or related illnesses and playing football.  The Adamle story jumped to page two, above which a savvy editor put a story on the current CTE settlement between the NFL and former players.  It’s expected to cost the league $1 billion over 65 years.  The McCaskeys could tell you that’s chicken feed.

And lastly this gem from Patriots’ coach Bill Belichick, on Boston celebrating the team’s victory in the Super Bowl:  “As great as today is, in all honesty, we’re five weeks behind in the 2017 season.”  Are the Patriots a dynasty?  No, because that implies human beings at work, and Belichick is nothing but a football automaton.  Better to call them a machine.