There was nobody happier when the deadline for the Illinois state government to pass a bill on a Chicago Bears stadium than Mike Braun. The governor of Indiana has been pursuing the team relentlessly for the past couple of years. His government has already passed the necessary legislation to help the Bears begin building a new stadium at any site of their choice should they decide to come to Indiana. However, they’ve been hesitant to make the move, letting the process in Springfield play out.
Failing to get anything done before the state legislature adjourned for the summer is a massive blunder in Braun’s estimation. He told Hannah Adamson that such a failure would end up costing them the game. Braun is so confident that the Bears are now destined for Hammond that he openly declared a decision will be announced within the next few weeks.
“…We move at the speed of business, and that honest conversation we had should have cued them there that they needed to do something other than adjourning without, you know, any result.
I think that this just puts the punctuation on the fact that [the Bears] were doing their due diligence all along, and I expect them to probably make some formal announcement maybe now in less than a month…”
Illinois politicians have insisted a resolution will happen sooner rather than later, but it sure doesn’t sound like there’s a sense of urgency. In other words, they’ve called the Bears’ bluff.
Mike Braun knows the situation the Bears are in.
They have one of two options on the table. Either they maintain the status quo, which would basically be the same as waving the white flag and forfeiting any leverage they may have had in talks. Or they finally accept that Illinois won’t cooperate and decide Indiana is making a more than competitive offer. Announcing a move to Hammond would have one of two results. They either do as Braun thinks and move the team out of state to start a new era of Bears football. Or it potentially scares Illinois lawmakers enough to call a special session in Springfield to push a stadium bill through.
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Everything comes down to George McCaskey. Team president Kevin Warren has bungled this process for years, repeatedly demonstrating that he has no grasp of how to conduct negotiations. Now he’s put his owner behind the 8 ball. It is evident that the McCaskeys preferred to stay in Illinois. If not, they would’ve left months ago. Now things are crystal clear. If the Bears wait, there is a strong probability that no resolution on a stadium bill will come until next spring. McCaskey is plenty used to humiliating defeats, but even he has to have some pride.
There is one other option.
McCaskey could fire Warren and see if somebody else could conduct negotiations with a little more professionalism. It’s a poorly-kept secret that the Bears’ owner is not happy with his president. Warren has managed to dodge the ax up to this point, perhaps suggesting that McCaskey was waiting to see if the spring session might yield results. The fact that it didn’t pretty much makes Warren’s presence irrelevant. If the Bears are dead set on staying in Illinois, they have to get him out of the picture. Everybody in Springfield hates him.
Well, maybe not Mike Braun. After all, if not for Warren, the odds of Indiana landing the Bears would’ve been far longer than they are now. Hammond is in the driver’s seat unless Illinois makes some sort of gesture that assures the organization that a resolution is near. Given how things have gone to this point, that isn’t something you’d be willing to bet on. Maybe Braun is celebrating too early, but he has good reasons to do so.
