You know it’s getting wild when a guy I went to high school with is now trying to steal the Bears from the city of Chicago.
Watching Portage Mayor Austin Bonta on ESPN Chicago talking about his city’s plans for a privately funded, taxpayer payer-free, and fully debt-free “Halas Harbor” for the Bears took me all the way back to Honors European History at Andrean High School in Merrillville, constantly duking it out with this dude for the top grades in the class. I couldn’t keep from laughing when I saw
he’d been elected mayor—not as an insult, but because nothing has ever made more sense in my life. If Illinois doesn’t get its act together, this guy will run the state’s pockets with his hands folded in front of him. Trust me.
But as funny as it would be to see Mayor Bonta pull off this eleventh-hour upset, I’m going to have to root against him on this one.
Because the Chicago Bears have no business being in Indiana.
And I’m saying this as someone who lived about 27 of my 35 years in the 90-mile track between Hyde Park, where I went to college, and South Bend, Indiana.
On one hand, I get it.
It’s going to be way cheaper to get a stadium built in Indiana than Illinois, whether in Arlington Heights or Chicago itself. And it seems like Indiana is willing to do whatever it takes to get it done, including building the whole thing themselves and letting the Bears manage the property on their side of the border.
You can see the logic in it. Places like Hammond, which has also thrown in its hat for a Bears stadium, and (to a lesser extent) Portage are close enough for Bears fans to get to for games. (Though I must say, I would hate to see how awful 80/94 and I-90 would be on game days.) And this area of the old steel corridor, which still employs a lot of people (including my father) after the glory days of old, would see an economic come-up of another kind, with local businesses seeing boosts from all the outside traffic (pun intended).
Of course, building in Indiana, while more cost-effective, would still carry this drawback: the Bears wouldn’t own their own stadium, the way organizations like the New England Patriots do out in Foxborough (which is about 30 minutes away from my house on a good day).
When I think of Arlington Heights, I think of the Bears being able to build out something like Patriot Place, with restaurants, movie theaters, and other amenities, not to mention hosting whatever events they want (like the Super Bowl…). Could another site offer something similar? Yes. But it wouldn’t be all theirs. Not like this could. Which is why it seems like the Bears are still willing to fork over the $5 billion or so it would to make it happen.
All that is cool.
But for me, it’s about the principle.
If the Chicago Bears aren’t going to be in Chicago, then they should at least be in Illinois, where the vast majority of its fans are. Indiana already has an NFL team. Illinois doesn’t. And for my entire life growing up in Northwest Indiana, Chicago sports teams were my teams anyway. It was a treat to travel up to visit one of the greatest cities in the world on a game day. To roam around downtown or dive into a bar when the game’s over, or grab some of the best pizza in the world to warm you up after freezing your butt off.
While I truly do want to see places like Gary, where I spent a lot of my childhood, see better days thanks to landing a new Bears stadium, it just wouldn’t feel the same. (Though I admit, I’d be more likely to go back there for a game than Portage. Sorry, Austin.) Maybe it’s just my personal bias of not enjoying growing up there, but I don’t want to see Indiana vulture its way into the Bears the way the backup running back steals from your RB1 in fantasy.
Sometimes, it doesn’t need to be much more well-thought out than that. Indiana sucks. Keep the Bears away from them.
If all else fails, just slap an ugly dome on top of Soldier Field. That way, it can really look like a spaceship.
