ESPN football writer Adam Schefter, who loves his unnamed NFL sources, was back at it yesterday with this tweet about the Chicago Bears and their stadium situation:
None of this really needed to be cited to NFL insiders, since Bears exec Kevin Warren already said basically the same thing last week. (Though it did get Schefter’s name in the national media a lot as a “senior NFL Insider,” if that floats his boat.) What does any of it actually mean, though, if anything?
Most sports team move threats, historically, are bluffs. That’s not because team owners are pathological liars — not all of them, anyway — but because threats are so easy to levy, there’s virtually no cost to them: If you hint that your team is going to move without a new stadium, and then come back the next year and repeat the exact same threat, it’s not like anybody’s going to call you on it. And better yet, if you can get local elected officials to issue relocation warnings by proxy, no one can even connect you with the threat in the first place.
In the Bears case, all this “Illinois is on the clock or else we’ll move the team to Indiana” should make one thing eminently clear: Bears owner George McCaskey would rather not move his team to Indiana. If he did, he’d already have accepted that state’s $4 billion-ish stadium subsidy offer, because there’s no way Illinois is ever going to match it. If Bears leadership is still dangling the hope of reconciliation before the Illinois legislature, it can only because he is hoping state officials will enrich their offer for an Arlington Heights stadium, and he can stay in his preferred state while getting Illinois taxpayers to cover part of his new stadium bill.
(Another thought: It’s possible that part of the message NFL officials mean to send via Schefter is that a new stadium in Chicago is 100% off the table — even if Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson wants to insist otherwise — and so Chicago-area legislators should get over their upset at the Bears leaving the city proper and rally around legislation to at least keep the team in the state.)
How much money will Illinois have to come up with to turn McCaskey’s head? That’s unknown: He clearly wants the state to pass the “megaprojects” bill that could give him up to $2 billion in property tax breaks; it remains to be seen whether he’ll also hold out for the $855 million in infrastructure spending that Bears management previously floated. If McCaskey doesn’t get what he wants by the time the Illinois legislature adjourns in May, he’ll have to decide whether to take Indiana’s offer or send Warren to pull a David Samson and go back with one more “this time, we’re really moving if you do give us what you want” threat. Playing chicken is hard — though when the choice is between which multibillion-dollar check to accept, maybe not all that hard.
Is anyone ever referred to as a “junior NFL insider?”
How about a miniature NFL insider?
Shameless touts get the disrespect they deserve.
“…McCaskey would rather not move his team to Indiana. If he did, he’d already have accepted that state’s offer…”
Precisely, and this should be the only ‘take away’ from this entire process. It’s just a shake down. And the only way to win a shake down is not to play. Clearly I missed an opportunity for a football metaphor there, but so be it.
How could anyone in political office know if McCaskey is serious unless they know whether he has the money (or can raise it without selling his mother’s team…) to either build in Arlington Heights or Indiana?
The elected officials of Illinois and Chicago need to create a put up or shut up moment. Neither should be bidding against themselves, much less a fanciful (or maybe entirely fictional) offer from “somewhere else”.