The Chicago Bears have tried for the better part of three decades to find the GM who can carry them back to the promised land. Bill Tobin? Rod Graves? Mark Hatley? Jerry Angelo? Phil Emery? Ryan Pace? All have failed to varying extents in this goal. With their track record of finding the right football people to fix this thing, is it time for Bears ownership to consider a non-football solution? Joe Maddon thinks so.
The former Chicago Cubs manager is busy down in Anaheim these days, but he hasn’t forgotten his amazing experience up north. Nor the people he had a chance to work with that led to a World Series championship in 2016. He like the rest of the sports world heard about the resignation of Cubs president Theo Epstein, the grand architect of that unforgettable team. The first to win a title in 108 years. This after doing the same for the Boston Red Sox after 86 years in 2004.
If ending droughts is his calling card, could that magic work for the Bears?
It sounds crazy. Hiring a life-long baseball executive to turn around a football franchise? Just unheard of. Or is it? The crossover between sports is rare but hardly anything new. Jim Finks, the architect of the 1985 Bears Super Bowl team, stepped down in 1983. A year later he was put in charge of the Cubs and got them to the playoffs for the first time since 1945. John McDonough, who’d run the Cubs for years, left to take over the Blackhawks in 2007. He eventually helped them win three Stanley Cups.
Sports are sports. Good executives understand the baseline of every sport is acquiring the right talent. In Maddon’s mind? Epstein is this rare sort of individual. The type who it doesn’t really matter what professional direction he takes. It’s inevitable the man will find success at it. He said as much to NBC Sports Chicago.
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“He’s won three World Series,” Angels manager Joe Maddon said. “Yeah, he’s ready for a Super Bowl.”
“Whatever he wants to do, whether it’s something within the baseball industry, whether he wants to be something in politics, if he wants to get into private-sector business-wise — there isn’t anything he can’t do,” Maddon said. “I believe that.”
Joe Maddon isn’t wrong that Epstein can help the Bears
The man is clearly a gifted front office mind. It probably wouldn’t be a huge leap for him to grasp the dimensions of constructing a football roster versus a baseball one. The question is whether he’d even be interested. Epstein has been around baseball his entire life. It’s been his passion for a long time. Expectations are his eventual goal is to own part of a team. Certainly, the next step up since he has little left to prove as an executive.
Then again, there are other ways to offer a man a challenge. What about becoming the first executive in sports history to win a championship in the same city for two different sports? That would elevate him from just baseball legend to sports icon. Perhaps the greatest executive in modern history. Remember he is still just 46-years old. Young by front office standards. What have the Bears got to lose?
Truth be told, this sort of move is not something the McCaskeys would do.
They’ve never been known for thinking outside the box. Joe Maddon is merely pumping up an old friend. If the Bears do move on from Pace next month, they will stick closer to NFL circles. Epstein is a fun what-if scenario but his future will likely remain in baseball. Then again, Finks surprised everybody back in 1984. Maybe it can happen again. This time in reverse.