Even when packed with zealous fans cheering players who can actually block and tackle, Soldier Field at best resembles a mausoleum.
One shudders to imagine what the worst facility in the NFL will feel like this season with the Bears evoking an early epidemic of indifference. Not in our memory has this city seemed so apathetic about pro football, or whatever it is the Bears are practicing.
Even when the team was dreadful, as in 1-13 in 1969, there were Gale Sayers and Dick Butkus. Character and characters. But the pulse is faint now, the roster virtually anonymous and the direction vague.
Where there is no apparent plan, there is little discernible hope, and what an ominous circumstance that is for any franchise in Chicago, home of the most forgiving sports consumers on the planet.
The Bulls have been great fun for a relatively brief time, and the Cubs offer sunshine even when they can’t see daylight, but this always has been Bear country. The Bears are beyond entertainment in these parts.
People don’t go to Soldier Field to be seen, or to dress up, or to get comfortable. The Bears aren’t a social occasion, a fad or a place to jump on the bandwagon. The Bears are like blood, like family, in Chicago. You might not always agree with them, you often get downright angry at them, but you care.
At least you used to. Now the absence of emotion about the Bears is astounding, though not mysterious. On the contrary. They started it. Mike Ditka might have been overripe when his tenure ended, but say this: He had a pulse.
Where this current bunch began to stray is difficult to pinpoint, but allow us to mention a day of infamy in these eyes. It was an afternoon at San Francisco, January 1995, Dave Wannstedt’s second season as coach.
The Bears, who went 7-9 in his first year, had turned it around to 9-7, made the playoffs, even upset the Vikings in Minneapolis on New Year’s Day. But that next week in Candlestick Park, the 49ers destroyed the Bears, which was understandable, because the 49ers were loaded.
However, the Bears made it worse, because they were just happy to be there. Players dismissed the rout as inevitable. There was not an ounce of indignation on the field that day, and even less anger in the locker room afterward. The Wannstedt Bears haven’t been in the playoffs since, and they’ve avoided the postseason on merit.
These Bears don’t only lack bodies, they lack soul. And somewhere along the way, fans have been swept up in the ennui. Never did I think I would see a day when pro football fans in Chicago would lose interest in the Bears, but that year might be upon us.
Home games blacked out on TV? It’s happened here before. What you sense now, however, is that fans have tuned out because they already get the picture. The Curtis Enis taffy pull is such a mess that fans even side with management. He will soon get a take-it-or-leave-it ultimatum, but it won’t be soon enough.
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Still, the same people who say the Bears are right just this one time also rue the Enis impasse as more of the same old stuff. It can’t be coincidence that the Bears have so much bad luck. And there’s Michael McCaskey on the tube, begging for a new stadium and congratulating his coaching staff on a job well done.
This is not what fans want to hear. Yes, Soldier Field is a disgrace, and absolutely, that shiny new building in Baltimore is terrific. But enough rhetoric. Shouldn’t McCaskey be talking to Mayor Daley instead of us couch potatoes?
Still, the worst mistake we can make is to assume that the Bears don’t matter, that a last-place finish in the NFC Central means they have no place in our hearts. If you sometimes wish the incompetent and whining Bears would just go away and take their unloved president with them, remember one word.
Cleveland.