The_Admiral

I think what I still can't get past more than anything is that they tried to make a move against Chicago while staying in Cook County. Chicago and Cook County aren't officially consolidated like San Francisco or Philadelphia, but the two hardly have an adversarial relationship--broadly speaking, what's good for the city is good for the county, and losing the Bears would have been bad for the city. (Of course, keeping them under Saint Kevin's onerous terms might be even worse.) And so no one except the McCaskeys could be that surprised when the county assessor found a way to hit them with a tax bill they couldn't afford and scuttled their plans. Arlington Heights was going to be in its own county once upon a time, but then the northwest suburbs started voting Democratic and I haven't heard about it since. Maybe the Bears had bad intel there too. I can still see an open-air stadium on Roosevelt with mostly private funds. Something like what the Seahawks have with covered stands. Bears, Fire, Red Stars. No ambitious surrounding development. Maybe Beyonce can split the difference and only do a ten-night residency.

Do you suspect, as I do, that Pritzker is still cosmically annoyed with the Bears for their initial "we bought Arlington Park, now do as we tell you for we are the Bears" stunt and is not really going to let them get away with continuously trying to big-time everyone? It feels like the Bears have been operating under an old paradigm where the governor of Illinois only exists to officially open the state fair. Just inept at every turn.

Yeah, Lambeau Field and Soldier Field are both Ships of Theseus, except more a Lifeboat of Theseus in Chicago's case. Even with Yankee Stadium before and after the renovation, they looked like the same place. 2003 Soldier Field's seating bowl is a completely different shape from the original, which lopped off the end of the stadium and actually had more seats facing the endzones than the sidelines. EDIT: Weird old building.

Oh, and Warren also said the stadium would draw 77,000 each to the men's and women's Final Fours. And then he said Chicago would get World Cup games. GENIUS, the next World Cup in the United States is in two years; when, pray tell, do you think the next one will be? At the rate they're going, the Bears would be replacing the new stadium before it ever came back here! I loathe this team.

There's a lot wrong with Soldier Field. It's too small, the field doesn't drain right, it's a pain in the ass to drive to, nor is it terribly accessible by transit relative to Wrigley, Comiskey, the United Center, UIC Pavilion, Northwestern's stadium, the new DePaul arena, and pretty much every other sports venue. The only one harder to not-drive to is the Horizon. Most of all, it's absolutely hideous, which is amplified by the Packers doing a terrific job improving Lambeau at the same time. But it's exactly what the Bears asked for. They wanted seats close to the sidelines, many more luxury boxes, and a low capacity to goose demand and keep out the poors, and that's basically what they got. They were gifted a stadium on their terms and 20 years later asked for another. And thanked God for Kevin Warren. Despicable.

You'd have to be a grade-A moron at Bovine University to think you can and should drive right up to the doorstep of a building on the Chicago lakefront, but the parking doesn't exist because this stadium won't exist.

You can't take the L to the University of Chicago because a pastor had the tracks torn down for his real estate investments. What the hell is this guy doing?

What I witnessed today is one of the most bizarre presentations I've ever seen. A pastor thanked God for giving us Kevin Warren and prayed that the Bears would be granted public funding for a stadium. So if you've been watching the Bears hire like five different "chief stadium officers" and asked "what is is that Kevin Warren actually does," the answer is "tell the clergy to praise God for his existence." Then Kevin Warren said that he almost missed a Beyonce concert because it rained and that with a domed stadium, she and others would do 20-night residencies here. He said "it is a fixed roof dome. It will be very bright. You will need to wear sunglasses," which was a Casio preset and a Wheaties slogan away from being Wesley Willis lyrics. He asked "who wouldn't want to go to Chicago for the Super Bowl," to which the answer is "everyone." The stadium rendering is just Allegiant Stadium with the field switched out, which is at least better than the Arlington Heights rendering that was just an opaque white cube. And then they got coy about maybe running back to Arlington Heights anyway. I saw this on my lunch break, so I can only assume that when someone asked Brandon Johnson how they're going to pay for this with "no new taxes" while also requiring billions of dollars in taxes, he said "help help I'm having a panic attack" and ran away. They obviously did this today so that everyone would forget about it when they draft Caleb Williams. I don't think they thought any of this through.

Utah has a long tradition of borrowing from Denver on the NBA side of things, so I guess it's just as well that they start doing it with hockey and the perils of snow-covered mountains, too.

What else is new?

Black Diamonds is compelling. One more "Soakers" joke and I start trying to give adults shaken baby syndrome.

They'll have to park at their respective Metra stations and take the trains in. Then when they all get there we'll get into the Guinness Book of World Records for most people simultaneously yelling the n-word. It would be funny if Soldier Field left the colonnades but otherwise became a parking lot. I'm just sitting here like "well BigMac12 sure showed me."

Yes! He has "observer status"!

Lightning fans are normal, which is surprising for Florida, likely because the Bolts have never been a "best-kept secret" for extremely online weirdos to get all smug about liking. I had to read all about how Justin Faulk was the best defenseman no one was talking about in 2013 and then later they all insisted he was so good he had to be traded immediately.

Yeah, it's a tendency I hate so much. I would find race-to-the-bottom Raleigh loathsome even if they never got the Whalers. plAIoffs! AI, Branford, you heard about this?

It was the choreographed victory celebrations that were really the point of no return for me, which probably came out of the marketing department but probably not the buttmonkey who does the tweets. Hurricanes fans on the internet had been annoying for a while, but once it extended into the actual team doing the Macarena after wins, I just felt so embarrassed that marketing the league ever had to come to this. Of course, I am not the target audience. The target audience is people who get excited when the Wendy's account makes a sassy tweet at a person.

I'd like to thank everyone for joining me at the "Carolina's reddit-ass fanbase needs to stop" table, I've been expecting you.

Cards on the table, Johnson will resign due to "mental health issues and spending time with family" before he can finish his term or get pushed out. What a disappointment. They're not even naming the "city officials," which means he probably won't be there either. It'll be some guy from the water reclamation district who was not consulted on any of this.

Lake Michigan has fish, Great Salt Lake doesn't

"Not great, could be worse" seems like the consensus. I agree. I'm glad that the triangles are also Tactical Armpits.

Gulls are seabirds and Salt Lake City is about as far from any watershed as possible. Did they become the state bird by clerical error or do they just really dig the Great Salt Lake? There you go: Utah Brine Shrimp. Brandiose is already on it.

What is that barn they're playing in? Why is the roof so low? Is it next to an airport?

Pioneers is probably out because people will say it's white supremacist (but again, this team is implicitly for the gentile transplants anyway, i.e., not pioneer stock). I said "Salt Barons" as a joke but I'll be damned, that's the best I can do. It's still better than women's-indoor-soccer-league-ass Fury and Venom.

I'm not bullish on the long-term viability of an infinitely sprawling metropolis in a desert that's running out of water. A lot of people may have to go back home and go back to being Wings/Hawks/Flames fans.

beep boop the game has never been better go back to Ethan Strauss's substack you're being unfair to LeBron beep boop