George Halas Deserves So Much Better

It should be no surprise that pretty much everyone in Chicago is out on the Bears right now after that absolute disaster of a press conference last week. I've spent the balance of time since then attempting to reconcile the overwhelming lack of accountability from one of the most significant institutions of our collective existence and needless to say it sucks. Nevertheless I've been making progress one expert mock draft at a time. And besides if we have Roquan and Mooney we're probably talking about a different ending to this season's story but that's a different blog

Point is things kinda suck right now and there's a good chance they get worse as I draw attention to a George McCaskey interview from 670 The Score: 

“I’ve heard a lot about you need a football guy, a czar, a president of football operations, whatever,” McCaskey said on the Danny Parkins Show on Thursday. “In our structure, the football guy is the general manager. Even if you had a president of football operations, that guy at some point would be reporting to a non-football person."

Simple quote to a lot of outsiders and casual fans. But it's this exact part where my brain nearly split in half and that's because George McCaskey is the final decision maker as the Chairman of the Bears. As confirmed on the press conference, he's the one with ultimate say on all the big shit. He's the guy driving the bus and making the tough decisions. That's what Chair People do. They lead. 

And in this case the Chairman leading us explicitly self-identifies as a non Football Guy. "Would be reporting to a non-football person." That's specifically George McCaskey talking about George McCaskey, and at surface level that should be pretty frustrating for any fans to hear about any owner. 

But admittedly a lot of owners simply aren't Football Guys. They're successful business owners or whatever that have grown with the NFL's post Y2K boom. They're smart investors that saw an opportunity and have made a killing. To me that's your average NFL owner with a 90% confidence interval. Nobody expects these kinds of people to be Football Guys. 

At the same time though, none of these dudes are the fucking GRANDSON of George Halas. The man's bloodline literally founded the National Football league and the Chicago Bears. He's arguably the most historically significant professional sports administrator in Chicago history. We're talking about Papa Bear for fuckssake. 

Dozier Mobley. Shutterstock Images.

George McCaskey is the living breathing descendant of this man. And yet he's out here carrying his first name around like a loaf of bread with the unmitigated gaul to proclaim himself a Non Football Guy? Please excuse me as I swallow puke and regain my composure for a moment. I'm definitely going to be sick. 

Is it news? 

Absolutely not. Nowhere close to it. I'm not telling you anything you didn't already know if you keep your head on a swivel. But deep down inside it's just crushing on a wholly separate level when you hear it from the horse's mouth. 

Like it's one thing for us to all know that George McCaskey isn't exactly the world's biggest Football Guy. But it's completely different to hear him so casually admit it in self-defense of his decisions. I know we're looking for positives this time of year but there's no denying how defeating that is. Fucking McCaskey. 

At least he's got that going for him. 

Goddamnit McCaskey

Easily a top-5 name to get mad at. You could bitch at that last name all day long and it would never get old. Just rolls right off the tongue. 

YOU'RE KILING ME MCCASKEY

So I got that going for me. Which is nice.