Decatur residents must have felt gut-punched when their pro football team the Staleys left the central Illinois community in 1921. Denizens of Baltimore howled when their beloved Colts crept out of town under cover of darkness in 1984.
We’re getting a taste of those jolting blows as the Chicago Bears contemplate hightailing to a new domed stadium just a few miles from the Cook County line in Hammond, Indiana. It’s not a pleasant feeling, but no need for therapy.
The Staleys, started by the A.E. Staley starch company, moved to Chicago when George Halas got control of the team. It was one of the legacy National Football League teams based in the Windy City. By 1922, he had renamed them the Bears, whose mascot today is Staley the Bear.
The Colts settled happily in Indianapolis in the Hoosier State, where the Bears’ board of directors voted last week to beginning plans for that new venue. Yet, that vote may not be the end of this ongoing stadium saga.
Reportedly, there is still room to negotiate, according to several media outlets. Illinois pols and the Bears’ brain trust appear to be practitioners of the Donald Trump School of International Diplomacy, where the deal is artfully around the next corner. Maybe.
Ah, but where is the brio of past officials who greeted similar threats with: Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.
Like Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley, who back in 1975 promised to strip the Bears of the name “Chicago” after “Papa Bear” Halas said the team was moving to Arlington Heights (is there a theme here?). Or Da Boss’ son, Richard M. Daley, who in 1995 replied to a similar peril: “They can go to Alaska.”
Instead, we see quivering fans decrying the possibility that perhaps or maybe the Bears will jump to a Northwest Indiana site which may be tainted with toxic leftovers from that region’s heavy industrial past, an heirloom apparently well known among Hoosiers. We see Illinois leaders fidgeting and pointing fingers after failing to come up with a plan of tax breaks and infrastructure funding for the old Arlington International Racecourse in Arlington Heights (yes, there is a theme) to satisfy the team’s owners, the McCaskey family.
It’s not like fans of other teams haven’t faced similar situations since pro football has risen since the last century to become America’s sport of choice and favorite betting experience. Indeed, the Chicago Cardinals, another NFL legacy team and once a fan favorite playing games at Soldier Field before the Bears made the stadium their home, bolted for St. Louis in 1960. The Cardinals have since relocated to Arizona.
The Detroit Lions moved to the Silverdome in Pontiac, 30 miles from Detroit, in 1975. They moved back to Detroit in 2002 to Ford Field.
The Boston Patriots, who have morphed into the New England Patriots, played most games when in the American Football League at Fenway Park in Boston. Their current stadium is in suburban Foxborough, 22 miles southwest of Boston. The Cleveland Browns have their stadium in a suburb southwest of the city.
The New York Jets and Giants were the first NFL teams to leave New York City proper to play their games in another state at MetLife Stadium in the Meadowlands complex in East Rutherford, New Jersey.
Before the Bears eventually decide if they want to leave their ancestral home of Illinois for Hoosierland, the Kansas City Chiefs may be playing not in Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Missouri, but in their new stadium sited in suburban Olathe, Kansas, 23 miles away.
It’s not personal, sports fans, it’s business. Big business.
Indiana is offering carte blanche and at least $1 billion in funding for a new Bears stadium, in return for all the jobs and taxes an arena will generate. Meanwhile, Illinois leaders are stumbling about over a Bears-funded domed stadium on the 326-acre site in Arlington Heights.
For Lake County, Bears management say they will keep their corporate headquarters at Halas Hall in Conway Park off the Tri-State Tollway in Lake Forest, even if they call Hammond home turf. Yet, if one can build a new stadium in another state, one can move a headquarters just as easily.
Unless there is a call for a special session to deal with the Bears crisis, the Illinois Legislature doesn’t return for its fall veto session until October. Indiana lawmakers are sitting back, watching the slow-motion tango in the Land of Lincoln, convinced they will be sitting in a sky box in a stadium in Hammond, watching their first Bears home game.
That’s when Bears fans must decide to follow their football team which has moved freely to another state. Or begin to root for yet another out-of-state team.
But not the Green Bay Packers.
Charles Selle is a former News-Sun reporter, political editor and editor. sellenews@gmail.com. X @sellenews
