Ted Phillips announced that his two-decade run as Chicago Bears team president would end following the 2022 season. It will mark 40 years of service to the organization. Nobody can say the man didn’t do his job when making the McCaskeys money. His efforts turned a few hundred million dollars into $5.8 billion. That said, many will say he left so much more money on the table because he failed to build a consistent winner. Now George McCaskey is tasked with finding a replacement.
The team chairman shared some details on the subject during an interview with Colleen Kane of the Chicago Tribune. He plans to conduct a similar interview process to the one he had when seeking a new GM and head coach. A search group led by him will build a list of diverse candidates and work through them until the right person is found. Among the details he shared, one stuck out more than the others.
It sounds like they want someone with a background in business and football.
The Bears Chairman said members of the search team, who were assembled to find a replacement for retiring President and CEO Ted Phillips, are “not locked into a business or football person.”
They’re open to both in-house and external candidates.
They’re not going to hire or eliminate someone based on their availability to join the team by Phillips’ retirement date of Feb. 28.
And they would consider a candidate who doesn’t have experience with a stadium project like the one the Bears are exploring in Arlington Heights, if that person could hire the right people to lead it.
So what exactly are the Bears looking for?
“Leadership, vision, humility, consensus building,” McCaskey said…
…McCaskey did reveal one other most notable detail of the Bears’ plans: “We don’t anticipate any change in the structure.”
That means McCaskey does not expect the Bears to create separate presidents of business and football operations. Whether the new president has both business and football experience, however, is possible.
George McCaskey may have listened to fans.
During the many calls for Phillips’ firing over the past several years, the persistent criticism was his lacking football knowledge. Having a guy in charge of a football organization with zero background in football made no sense. Yet that was the case with Phillips. He was a career accountant that hadn’t once played, coached, or scouted the sport before he arrived in Chicago. Letting somebody like that make critical football-related decisions is asking for failure.
Now it seems George McCaskey might be interested in finding somebody that can bridge the gap. He clearly still wants a person with business credentials at the top of the organization, but it’s also important they have a deeper understanding of the game itself. That would explain why Trace Armstrong is a top candidate. He played in the NFL for a decade and then became one of the most powerful agents in the league. That is the kind of hybrid the Bears should seek.
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It will be interesting to see which names surface as front runners a few months from now.
