The big selling point with Kevin Warren when the Chicago Bears hired him to replace Ted Phillips as team president was his experience in getting a stadium built. He’d played a central role in that with the Minnesota Vikings when they built U.S. Bank Stadium several years ago. George McCaskey and the other owners felt that experience would be crucial to them finally getting their own new stadium off the ground in Illinois. What has followed is four years of spinning wheels in the mud.
Warren has no progress to show in that time. The Bears have pivoted multiple times from one stadium site to another, promising shovels in the ground by 2025. Then 2026. Now it’s probably not happening until at least 2027. Every legislative push in Springfield has been stymied. Even his supposed backup plan in Hammond, Indiana, has run into problems due to environmental protection. Everything about the process has felt half-baked from the beginning. Is Warren really that inept? Sports Mockery insider Jeff Hughes provided details on the man in his latest podcast episode.
Kevin Warren has no concept of actual leadership.
“And Kevin comes in with a resume of never having really successfully run any organization and no football acumen. He’s worked on the periphery of football. And from day one, when he got here, I started hearing complaints from inside the building about how dysfunctional the offices were. And while I’m hearing that, he’s on self-promotional tours of his work ethic. Kevin Warren is very, very good at selling you Kevin Warren…
…But you’re seeing in how the stadium situation is playing out the two deficiencies of Kevin Warren. Number one, he is an awful politician. He is completely ill-equipped to play the game he is playing now. But number two, he is obsessed with everything being in full view. And the way you get these kinds of deals done at the governmental level is behind closed doors. You never want the public to see how the sausage is made because as soon as they see how their money is being spent on these stadiums and the infrastructure, they’re going to revolt because it’s insane and it’s theft…
…Because as soon as you let this play out for years, you have the kind of debates on social media and on talk radio that you have now. And now the scrutiny on this building, wherever they put it, will be insane. That’s the mistake Kevin Warren has made. And it’s amateur hour. He’s a terrible team president. He’s terrible at his job.”
“All hat, no cattle.”
That is an idiom used to describe people like Kevin Warren. They’re all talk, loving to put on a public show that they’re getting things done. Then, when you actually pay attention, they are accomplishing nothing. This describes the Bears president perfectly. He’ll sell you on a grand vision and why he is the perfect man to bring it to life. Then, when actual work has to get done, it’s like watching an 8th grader trying to do college calculus without having studied. Painful and endless.
The worst part is? The Bears are stuck with him. It is too late in the process to make a change now. Hiring a new president would require giving them added time to get familiar with where things are at and then deciding how to proceed. The McCaskeys have already lost too much time as it is. Warren might be inept, but removing him does more harm than good now. The best thing to do is stick it out, hope this thing gets done in the near future, and then worry about firing him after the dust settles.
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Warren should be grateful the McCaskeys are so patient.
Other owners probably would’ve dumped him already. If fans can tell he has no grasp of the job, you can bet the person who owns the team does too. Yet the McCaskeys have always operated in a way that resists change. They don’t like making sudden pivots. It is why they stuck with guys like Matt Eberflus, Ryan Pace, and Dave Wannstedt way longer than they should’ve. Kevin Warren is the same. He has done nothing for the team’s bottom line. If anything, he has brought more unwanted attention down on their heads than necessary.
Ted Phillips never did stuff like that. Say what you want about the former president. At least he seemed to have strong business acumen and a basic understanding of the pitfalls of media coverage. Warren has operated under a credo of there’s no such thing as bad publicity. Yet all the evidence to this point says the people he’s trying to negotiate with don’t appreciate his constant attention-seeking behavior. That is why all the failures to this point should be tied back to him.
