I was planning on talking about the roster more in the next installments of our Super Bowl Rumors Mill articles, but with all the news coming out about the stadium this week and the potential to get Arlington
Heights back on the table, I felt it was important to talk stadium first, as it seems that the story is evolving rapidly.
You can check out the first installment of the article series here. That article largely focuses on the general vibe of the Chicago Bears around the league and throughout the media coming out of the 2025 season and into 2026.
But before we get into the offensive and defensive side of the ball, let’s talk about the stadium. Now, I want to be clear about the sources here; these are people in the media or the league who have some knowledge about what’s going on with the stadium situation. It doesn’t mean they’ve directly talked to Illinois or Indiana politicians, but they have general information about what’s going on.
I also want to stress that this isn’t my area of expertise. I’m a media member, so if something isn’t 100% accurate as to how things are done, I apologize, but I’m just relaying information.
The Bears’ issues date back to when Ted Phillips, George McCaskey, and the Bears originally purchased the Arlington Heights property back in February of 2023.
The way it was explained to me, when purchases of that magnitude are made, especially for a commercial property, the purchaser speaks with local and state governments about obtaining tax certainty on the property. The Bears, before purchase, should have arranged an agreed-upon tax for the empty lot, and what the tax should be with completed structures on the property.
They did not.
When the Bears purchased the property, the tax bill on the property jumped substantially. Arlington Racetrack had been paying approximately $3 million in property taxes, but that number jumped to around $10 million based on the purchase price. However, because the Bears were leveling the park and leaving it a vacant lot, they felt they should be paying less than even the race track was paying previously.
These conversations should have been had before the purchase, but they were not done, so when the government readjusted the property tax based on the new value, the Bears didn’t want to pay it.
Kevin Warren started on the job a couple of months after the purchase and inherited this dispute.
Now, this was not said with direction information, but more speculation, that the Bears had no leverage on the property tax situation, and furthermore, the dispute also surrounded the infrastructure that the Bears wanted the state to pay for. Again, none of these conversations had been had before the Bears purchased the land.
The speculation was that the only way Warren was going to be able to have the property taxes reduced and the infrastructure bill picked up by the government was to create leverage. Warren started by trying to move the stadium project back to Chicago. Some people have told me that it was always a leverage play, while others have said that they truly believe Warren felt it was better for the Bears to stay in the city limits.
Regardless of what the truth is, once it was clear that the Bears would not be able to find land suitable to build the type of stadium and surrounding area they wanted and needed, there was no hope to keep the team in Chicago, and there was also no leverage created to try to reduce the bills needed at Arlington Heights.
Enter Indiana.
I think when the Bears first started exploring Northwest Indiana, it was largely (completely?) a leverage play to see if they could get Illinois to play ball. Indiana rolled out the red carpet. They are giving the Bears everything they wanted and then some.
I heard from more than one person that Indiana thought they could “make an offer the Bears couldn’t refuse.” Indiana sees this as an investment to have two world-class stadiums in their state that could host Super Bowls, Final Fours, concerts, and Big 10 Championships; they thought they could corner the market on major events in the Midwest and keep a lot of the revenues that come with these events in the state.
Indiana saw value in it, where Illinois did not. The deal offered was so sweet that suddenly, the Bears had to actually look at Indiana as a viable option. Every single person I’ve spoken with about this says the Bears do NOT want to move to Indiana. They very much want to keep the team in Illinois, but when a deal that good comes along, you have to seriously consider it.
It was a deal that Illinois knew was so sweet that the state government knew if they wanted to keep the Bears in Illinois, they had to come back to the table. That’s where we are today.
Now, I didn’t hear it in San Francisco, but I have heard from people in the past that Kevin Warren misplayed his hand on more than one occassion which caused some of the issues over the last couple of years. But based on what I heard in San Francisco, it certainly seems like he was dealt a hand with the 3 of diamonds, 5 of clubs, 7 of hearts, 9 of spades, and 10 of diamonds and was told to go win the World Series of Poker.
I think this whole situation deserves a lot of nuance. I think people want to point the finger at one particular person and yell, “You’re the reason for this mess!” And I think, because Kevin Warren was brought in here to build the Bears a new stadium, he is the easy target.
I think Warren certainly deserves blame for this situation. I think JB Pritzker and other government officials also deserve some. But I also think Ted Phillips deserves some blame for creating this problematic situation in the first place.
It looks to me that the Bears are going to end up in Arlington Heights. In the end, all the negotiations and all the public mess eventually get forgotten once the stadium is built and the Bears are playing in their new home. Plenty of these types of situations have gotten ugly in many different states over the years, and the Bears are really no different.
In the end, it will be water under the bridge, but for the last couple of seasons, it’s certainly been a headache.
