The McCaskey Family Is Furious With Kevin Warren — And It Exposes A Bigger Problem

The Chicago Bears’ process towards building a new stadium has been one long slog through the mud. Things started out well enough. They bid on the Arlington Park property, won the bid, and closed the deal to claim ownership. They already had the land. All they needed was the funding, tax assistance, and infrastructure to make it happen. Enter Kevin Warren. The former Big Ten commissioner had extensive NFL front office experience going back to the late 1990s, and had even helped the Minnesota Vikings get U.S. Bank Stadium built. He seemed like the perfect choice to guide the franchise forward.

Three years later, not much has changed. The Bears still own the land, but they haven’t made any progress with the state government on property taxes or infrastructure. It has gotten so bad that they’re now threatening to leave Illinois for the first time in over a century of existence, all because Warren bungled the entire process. Sports Mockery’s Jeff Hughes revealed on Twitter (X) that the McCaskey family is not happy with their president, feeling the man sold them a bill of goods.

The belief is Kevin Warren disrupted everything two years ago.

For two years, Arlington Heights was the Bears’ central focus. They wrapped up ownership and just needed some assurances on property taxes. Then, in early February of 2024, it was announced that the organization was diverting from that goal and making a concerted effort to build a new stadium in downtown Chicago. Arlington Heights Mayor Jim Tinaglia believes this was a miscalculation on Warren’s part. The city wasn’t really capable of providing the support necessary to build a new stadium, let alone the lack of support from Springfield and likely interference from activist groups.

It took months for Kevin Warren to realize this mistake and pivot back to Arlington Heights. By that point, the property tax issue had been resolved on a local level, but all that time spent on Chicago could’ve been used to work with the state government on solutions for Arlington. Warren tried pushing Springfield for help, hoping to make up for lost time. When he encountered resistance, that triggered the decision to explore options in Northwest Indiana, something the McCaskeys had never wanted.

Everything about Warren’s hiring process felt wrong.

As Hughes stated above, the stadium was the only reason Kevin Warren was hired. That should’ve been a red flag from the outset. The team president’s responsibilities should go beyond just getting a stadium built. They run the business operations, seek financial success, and establish the strategic vision. Yet it feels like the McCaskeys didn’t do a serious vetting process. Warren was the only name to emerge for the job, and he was hired. Did ownership even bother doing a serious search?

If they had, they might’ve come across the knowledge that Warren wasn’t exactly liked or respected in the Big Ten ranks. Many high-ranking officials, including coaches and athletic directors, hated him. They felt he was arrogant, lacked common sense, and didn’t know how to handle negotiations, as proven by the conference’s media rights deal with NBC. Then again, maybe we shouldn’t be surprised.

Warren is the first-ever person outside the Bears organization to receive the job. The McCaskeys had kept it in-house for decades. It’s little wonder the search they conducted was so poor. They likely had no idea what they were looking for, given their overall lack of business savvy.