Sowing and Reaping

The chants of “Fire Nagy!” just won’t quit: Bears’ games; Bulls’ games; Blackhawks’ games; and, unfortunately, a suburban high school football game where Nagy’s sons are on the team. Never have the peasants been so aroused to anger. And the Bears’ Eddie Jackson doesn’t like it. The veteran safety has complained “fans have got to understand” booing doesn’t help anything. If only Jackson understood, and I don’t mean fans’ frustration. It’s more than that. The situation in Chicago is the byproduct of pro football being lord of the land, a 24/7 enterprise pretty much in-season and out-. I honestly don’t know how this came to be; I’m a baseball guy, always have been, always will be. But the national pastime got caught and lapped by a 1920s’ upstart. The NFL has fostered an environment where “the team” is everything. If the commercials are to be believed, wearing the team’s merchandise is an act of faith, and I do mean faith. As strange as that may be to someone like me, it’s no weirder than televising the annual NFL combine or the draft. Maybe other teams invite fans down to the field during training camp, aka Family Fest; whether or not they do, it’s taken on a meaning akin to that kid sharing his Coke with Mean Joe Greene. The very fact that people still remember an ad over thirty years old speaks volumes and kind of explains it all. No other Chicago team has engendered the passion the Munsters have since at least Super Bowl XX in 1986, and maybe long before that; I didn’t always pay attention to that sort of thing. I do now, just like Bears’ fans finally care about performance over promise. At the beginning of the season, McDonald’s was running commercials featuring Nagy delivering a pep talk to employees. Other seasons, and this was par for the course. This year, finally, things have changed. The ad’s disappeared, and fans aren’t putting up with Halas Hall crap anymore. That’s what Eddie Jackson and the other Bears’ players need to understand