Bears game 1: Sunday Sep. 12 vs DET on Fox

[Soul]

The Tribune said the Bears "may have lost their quarterback of the future." What? Anyway, Cincinnati picked up LeFevour. But seriously, what is Dan Pompei thinking?

 

 

Yeah, pretty dumb comment to open your article with.

 

The more one reads Chicago sportswriters, the more one realizes they're pretty much just average fans with the means to be heard by more than most others.

[Old Style]

Anyone think the Bears were the mystery team?

 

Trade talks over Vincent Jackson failed between the Chargers and an unnamed team after the holdout wide receiver agreed on terms for a new contract but San Diego and the unnamed team couldn't agree on compensation, his agents said.

 

http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=5536612

[rawaction]

Anyone think the Bears were the mystery team?

 

Trade talks over Vincent Jackson failed between the Chargers and an unnamed team after the holdout wide receiver agreed on terms for a new contract but San Diego and the unnamed team couldn't agree on compensation, his agents said.

 

http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=5536612

 

Pretty sure they were not. My guesses are either Seattle, Minnesota, or Baltimore

[Guest]

Lefevour looked awesome against AZ. But, I'm sure just about every QB worth a look in the NFL has shredded a 3rd string defensive backfield at one point or another. It's hard to say how he might fare if forced into action against top ranked defensive lines facing our rather weak offensive line.

 

I'm not sure how I feel about Collins. I'd almost prefer someone a bit more mobile, who can run downfield when the line breaks down. I thought Lefevour scrambled pretty well under pressure.

 

I guess I'm a bit torn. Our offensive line weakness makes our starting qb an injury risk. Probably need to carry 3 if grandpa Collins is the back up.

[Guest]

Isn't Vincent Jackson on a 4 game suspension for a second DUI?

[Guest]

My cable company has RDZN on two channels. Based on a google search, it appears with these channels, I can order and watch any games I want. Anyone familiar with this. Did DirecTV make games available for other providers?

[rawaction]

Isn't Vincent Jackson on a 4 game suspension for a second DUI?

 

3 games. But the Chargers also put him on some list which means he has to sit out 3 more games after his suspension. That may or may not still apply if he is traded.

[hawkeyecub]

My cable company has RDZN on two channels. Based on a google search, it appears with these channels, I can order and watch any games I want. Anyone familiar with this. Did DirecTV make games available for other providers?

 

No. My guess is you have Red Zone and Red Zone HD. You get the Red Zone Channel which will flip around to any game where a team has the ball in the red zone and/or the most interesting games. DirecTV Sunday Ticket is still the only way to watch entire out of market games on tv.

[Guest]

My cable company has RDZN on two channels. Based on a google search, it appears with these channels, I can order and watch any games I want. Anyone familiar with this. Did DirecTV make games available for other providers?

 

No. My guess is you have Red Zone and Red Zone HD. You get the Red Zone Channel which will flip around to any game where a team has the ball in the red zone and/or the most interesting games. DirecTV Sunday Ticket is still the only way to watch entire out of market games on tv.

 

Thanks for the info. I prefer watching games at the bar anyway.

[Soul]

My cable company has RDZN on two channels. Based on a google search, it appears with these channels, I can order and watch any games I want. Anyone familiar with this. Did DirecTV make games available for other providers?

 

No. My guess is you have Red Zone and Red Zone HD. You get the Red Zone Channel which will flip around to any game where a team has the ball in the red zone and/or the most interesting games. DirecTV Sunday Ticket is still the only way to watch entire out of market games on tv.

 

Thanks for the info. I prefer watching games at the bar anyway.

 

Red Zone channel is good, but I can't see only having that channel with no option to tune in to the actual games. Especially in the 2nd half of the games. RZC will focus in on games that are blowouts because one team is in the Red Zone. Once the games start coming down to the wire, I like to tune into the close games and forget about the blowouts.

[jersey cubs fan]

It's a 6.5 point line now. Vegas is begging people to take the Lions.

[Soul]

I usually don't gamble, but a moderate amount of money on the Lions seems like a smart play to me right now.

[SpongeWorthy]

http://www.forbes.com/2010/08/25/most-valuable-nfl-teams-business-sports-football-valuations-10-intro.html

 

The Chicago Bears are only the 9th most valuable franchise in the NFL. That's pretty pathetic.

 

http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2010/0913/nfl-values-10-bears-chicago-football-money-midgets-midway.html

[jersey cubs fan]

This story cracks me up every year. Basically, the Bears aren't as disgustingly over the top whores as the Cowboys and Redskins and they didn't get a $1.6 billion stadium built for them like the NY teams. Big fing deal. It's not the size of the market that makes the difference. "Sharing" NY hasn't stopped the Yankees from dominating MLB market values so why do the Giants get a pass for only being 4th? They are a private family business that is successful, but they get ridiculed for not being McDonald's. Everybody has extremely similar revenue numbers except for the two outlier teams with the most obnoxious owners, and even that isn't that crazy of a difference. This is a non-story, but they would get criticized if they acted more like Snyder and they are criticized for not acting enough like Snyder. I don't get it. They should have canned their football personel and started fresh, but the business is strong and healthy and this story is dumb.

[SpongeWorthy]

I'm not sure Snyder and Jones are ridiculed for being bad businessmen. They're ridiculed for their egos and in Snyder's case, a lack of success on the field.

 

Anyway, the Bears are run poorly from a business perspective and I don't think there's any disputing that. Now if it doesn't affect the product on the field then I could really care less but the 2nd article says the Bears have not been in the top 10 in payroll once since 1998 so I think we can assume it's a problem. From a larger perspective I think it's indicative of a culture that doesn't embrace change very well and isn't really cut throat about winning. That's why we get all these nice leader of men types as head coaches and no real innovators.

 

Plus I'm really just annoyed that the Bears are treated like the Tampa Bay Bucs while the Eagles and Cowboys of the world have their own personal ESPN reporters. It's not a huge deal or anything but it sticks in my craw.

[jersey cubs fan]

I'm not sure Snyder and Jones are ridiculed for being bad businessmen. They're ridiculed for their egos and in Snyder's case, a lack of success on the field.

 

Anyway, the Bears are run poorly from a business perspective and I don't think there's any disputing that.

 

There is plenty of disputing that. They run a profitable and successful privately held business. They just don't maximize revenues and whore out the team as much as Jones and Snyder. And make no mistake, their egos is the reason why they run their teams the way they have, and it hasn't translated to very much football success in Snyder's era or in the free agency era for Jones. They are run this way for the same reason they don't have cheerleaders, because Virginia is in charge. So be it. It has nothing to do with their lack of success on the field just like the Tribune's running of the Cubs business had nothing to do with their lack of baseball success. They haven't hired great football people, that's where they should be criticized, not because they don't charge enough for popcorn and training camp.

[Soul]

I think the Bears could be doing more -- there's no question about that. But the stadium is full every weekend win or lose, the checks are being covered, there's a profit margin.

 

It's a conservatively run organization. I definitely feel like they should be doing better, but on the other hand the criticism they've received over this strikes me as a tad over-the-top. They fill up their ballpark, they turn a profit, the value of the team has increased.. Surely that should be mentioned prominently somewhere. I mean, we're not talking about the Jags here.

[SpongeWorthy]

Being able to run a profitable, privately held business that you inherit from your highly innovative father/grandfather isn't really a sign of great business acumen. You take a valuable, highly visible asset in a captive market and you don't run it to the ground...sorry if I'm not singing your praises as an incredible business genius.

[jersey cubs fan]

Being able to run a profitable, privately held business that you inherit from your highly innovative father/grandfather isn't really a sign of great business acumen. You take a valuable, highly visible asset in a captive market and you don't run it to the ground...sorry if I'm not singing your praises as an incredible business genius.

 

It's pretty freaking idiotic to go from either praising their business genius or ridiculing their stupidity. This is a non-story. They aren't "poorly run", they are as somebody else said more conservative. Big deal. There's nothing wrong with that. It hasn't jeopardized the organizations ability to function as an ongoing concern.

[SpongeWorthy]

I'm criticizing their performance on the margin of things not because I think they're killing the viability of the Chicago Bears to be an ongoing concern. So yes, they're meeting and exceeding that very low hurdle. That isn't any reason for them not to attempt to do better.

 

I also think you'd have to take some outrageously stupid risks, or literally set piles of money on fire, to jeopardize the Chicago Bears as a viable NFL franchise. So what some would call conservative leadership I think I would call unnecessarily losing out on the risk-reward payoff. And as I said, I think that is indicative of a losing culture or at least not a win-maximizing one. The operations/player personnel decisions aren't totally divorced from the business side. The latter informs and shapes the former.

[UMFan83]

The Bears don't get treated like the Cowboys in the media because they are simply not a very colorful franchise.

 

Cowboys: 5 championships in the last 40 years

Bears: 1 championship in the last 40 years

 

Cowboys: 8 Super Bowl appearances in the last 40 years

Bears: 2 Super Bowl appearances in the last 40 years

 

Cowboys: Owned by a very media friendly owner who is vocal and fairly colorful. Does things like envisions and eventually builds (with public and NFL help) a $1.5 billion stadium

Bears: Owned by the McCaskey family, whose figurehead is a 90+ year old woman. It is almost impossible to get any sort of quote or message from the ownership that isn't relayed through Ted Phillips or other figureheads.

 

Cowboys: Known as unafraid to gamble, take chances on malcontents or players with issues, all (mostly) for the sake of winning.

Bears: If the Bears were an ice cream flavor, there's no doubt they would be vanillia. They don't want distractions, they don't particularly want players to make headlines for anything other than winning, and if they do they can most likely count their remaining days on the squad. (there have been exceptions - McMahon being the most obvious)

 

Cowboys: Have won with many different styles over the years

Bears: Have been known as a defensive team with a conservative offense based heavily on running the football. In this age of fantasty everything, the Bears haven't had much in the way of fantasy studs other than their kicker and defense most years.

 

Cowboys: Have had several popular Quarterbacks in their history (Staubach, Aikman, Romo), who are good, and for the most part embrace their celebrity.

Bears: The Bears may have had some colorful QBs from time to time, but they haven't had many good ones, that's for sure. They might have the worst historical collective QB talent of all 30 franchise. Fair or unfair, the QB is to most fans the face of the franchise, and by having names like Craig Krenzel, Cade McNown (entertaining but bad), Rex Grossman, Jim Miller, etc. manning the QB position, the face of the Bears franchise is empty.

 

So there is a ton of reasons why. I'm not saying what the Bears do is bad, and/or what the Cowboys do is good. I'm not saying that the Bears can control all of those things, and I'm not saying that the Bears need to even be where the Cowboys are in terms of visibility. All I'm saying is that those are several reasons why the Cowboys almost have their own ESPN show, and the Bears are only heavily talked about when they are good.

 

Ironic that despite all this, the Bears had one of the most popular, colorful and entertaining teams in the history of american sports in the mid-80's. And they did it with mainly defense, the same invisible ownership, a QB that was not hall of fame caliber (but was pretty good and clearly colorful), and relied heavily on the running game (I believe?). And everytime the Bears are good, suddenly the media, not just in Chicago, wants to bring up and relive that team. Because that's what the media wants.

[SpongeWorthy]

You also have to consider that several of the teams ahead of the Bears on those rankings are there because they have won bigger, more recently than Chicago has. The Bears can fall ass backwards into a huge, captive market without ever having to win much to maintain a relatively high valuation. The Patriots were as nondescript as NFL teams got until at least Parcells.

[jersey cubs fan]

I'm criticizing their performance on the margin of things not because I think they're killing the viability of the Chicago Bears to be an ongoing concern. So yes, they're meeting and exceeding that very low hurdle. That isn't any reason for them not to attempt to do better.

 

I also think you'd have to take some outrageously stupid risks, or literally set piles of money on fire, to jeopardize the Chicago Bears as a viable NFL franchise. So what some would call conservative leadership I think I would call unnecessarily losing out on the risk-reward payoff. And as I said, I think that is indicative of a losing culture or at least not a win-maximizing one. The operations/player personnel decisions aren't totally divorced from the business side. The latter informs and shapes the former.

 

The Redskins are both the model franchise for running a team the right way and a joke on the football field. Why are the Bears supposed to be more like Washington? Dallas had more success in the early 90's, but that was a different era. The Giants aren't top of the heap even though they "should" be, why aren't they criticized? Oh because they got taxpayers to build a $1.6b monster of a cash cow stadium while the Bears tried to stick within the traditional venue of Soldier Field and kept their stadium much smaller. Those bastards.

 

They aren't big enough whores for some people. That's not a story.

[Soul]

You also have to consider that several of the teams ahead of the Bears on those rankings are there because they have won bigger, more recently than Chicago has. The Bears can fall ass backwards into a huge, captive market without ever having to win much to maintain a relatively high valuation. The Patriots were as nondescript as NFL teams got until at least Parcells.

 

Again, difference between not maximizing potential vs. painting them as a "terrible organization."

 

There's a huge gulf between the two.

[SpongeWorthy]

I'm not criticizing the Giants because I'm a Bears fan, not a Giants fan. If the Giants want to shoot themselves in the foot we should welcome that. I'd rather it be the Packers but at least they're an NFC team.

 

In fact if the rest of the teams in the NFL want to be boobs about personnel and business decisions I'd welcome that too.