On Sunday, Bears principal proprietor Virginia McCaskey turned 102.
Crew founder George Halas’ first baby was born earlier than penicillin. She was slightly lady when Charles Lindbergh flew nonstop from New York to Paris in 1927. She was a young person when Jesse Owens received 4 gold medals on the Summer season Olympics in Berlin in 1936 and when the Hindenburg blew up in 1937.
And he or she was 63 when the Bears final received an NFL championship in January 1986.
This isn’t a lady to be trifled with. Fifty % of her DNA is from the person who was one of many founding fathers of the NFL. Take into consideration that.
When the luggage on heads popped up and the chants of ‘‘Promote the crew!’’ echoed by way of Soldier Discipline because the Bears went on a 10-game dropping streak this season, did folks know deep down what they have been asking for?
There clearly is one thing flawed within the Bears’ tradition, and it have to be the historic possession that’s at fault. What else might or not it’s? All the pieces begins on the high. The axiom holds, from wolf packs to companies.
After a 5-12 season, two playoff appearances for the reason that 2010 season, one playoff victory for the reason that 2006 season and one championship for the reason that Beatles launched ‘‘I Wish to Maintain Your Hand’’ 61 years in the past, the McCaskey household — headed by Virginia McCaskey — has failed.
Nobody is aware of what’s going to occur after the longtime matriarch leaves this mortal coil. The seemingly tumult means something is feasible.
Virginia had 11 youngsters, and son George is the Bears’ chairman, having changed brother Michael. The possession of the crew is sophisticated. There are a number of palms within the pie. Most are McCaskeys, however there’s additionally businessman Pat Ryan and the property of businessman Andrew McKenna.
Promoting the Bears would create an earthquake unmatched within the NFL. You don’t blow up the Bears casually.
One may say Virginia McCaskey doesn’t have hands-on management over the Bears and their operations. That is true. She could be very hands-off, very non-public. However she is the mom, the figurehead for all these children, the oldest descendant of ‘‘The Previous Man’’ himself, and her quiet, restrained, church-going severity permeates the Bears like a fog. When son Michael (who died in 2020) was demoted from crew president in a information convention at Halas Corridor in 1999, she was sitting beside him. She did the deed.
When the Bears went 5-11 in 2014 and coach Marc Trestman and common supervisor Phil Emery have been fired, son George mentioned his mother was ‘‘pissed off’’ in any respect the dropping. He added that her ‘‘dissatisfaction is shared by her youngsters, her grandchildren and her great-grandchildren.’’
Terrific.
The McCaskeys have failed that anger. Folks say they’re low-cost. What they are surely is uninventive, staid, old-school, caught in one thing like a Bronko Nagurski/T-formation time capsule.
I requested Michael McCaskey some years again, when he was nonetheless the Bears’ president, what he known as George Halas after they have been collectively.
‘‘Grandfather,’’ he replied.
It’s laborious to neglect stuff like that.
Let Jeff Bezos purchase the crew, on-line squawkers say. Or Elon Musk. Or George Soros. Or a private-equity dude. Any billionaire will do.
Billionaires, as we all know, rule the day. From enterprise to politics to music (pondering of you, Taylor Swift), billionaires are the gods we worship. However how would one in all them — or a consortium of them — run the Bears? Jerry Jones is a billionaire, and his Cowboys are caught in a rut even his cash can’t determine the way to repair.
This was an fascinating yr. Two quarterbacks the Bears might have gotten by way of commerce or draft — veteran Sam Darnold and rookie Jayden Daniels — have been voted to the upcoming Professional Bowl. The Bears’ Caleb Williams, after all, was not.
However neither was Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes, a generational expertise and, yep, one other participant the Bears might have had.
Little choices, little twists make all of the distinction within the NFL. You ponder whether a wealthy new proprietor of the Bears would know what they’re doing.
Once I consider Virginia McCaskey, I consider Loyola College’s famed nun, Sister Jean, who’s 105. I consider Mary Melberg, who at 106 was the oldest dwelling Cubs fan once I visited her in Texas in 2011. These girls are robust, they’re feisty, they don’t stop.
No one lasts perpetually. Issues change. However for now — consider it — the Bears are 100% not on the market.
