Please read this, Virginia.
Please don’t toss it away with a favorite response of your father’s: “Bleep to the critics.”
You are not your late, great dad, Virginia. You are a 77-year-old woman with 11 children who has found herself in an overwhelming situation. Since your dad, George Stanley Halas, died on Halloween night of 1983, the Chicago Bears he left you have more often than not been a nightmare.
What an unwitting and unfair burden he placed on your slight, strong shoulders. You are at least as tough and stubborn as Papa Bear, as he was called. So you press on, lips pursed against the north wind, refusing even to consider selling the team. To you, cashing out would be like selling your father’s soul. He founded this league and team, and it is all you have ever known.
Yet you, Virginia, are no more qualified to preside over an NFL team in the year 2000 than Cade McNown is to be the franchise savior. The current disaster started with you. Your poor choices begot so many others–a sap-filled family tree.
You chose your oldest son Michael to operate the team. He fired personnel director Rod Graves and hired Mark Hatley on–incomprehensibly–Graves’ recommendation. Now Hatley, a glorified scout in Kansas City, is the single most important man in your operation.
Hatley picked first-rounders McNown and Curtis Enis, Tweedledee and Tweedledum. Hatley spent almost $50 million on free agents named Phillip Daniels and Thomas Smith, Nos. 93 and 25, if you haven’t noticed. Your father would have been sickened.
You let your son Michael hire fellow Yalie Dick Jauron before having the guts to send Michael to his room for botching the hiring of one of your favorites, Dave McGinnis. You replaced Michael with Ted Phillips, who just might know less about football than you.
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Phillips now endorses Jauron’s “Indianapolis plan.” Go something like 3-13, as the Colts did while Peyton Manning grew up. Use your high pick on the closest thing to Edgerrin James in next April’s draft. Presto, playoff fever.
This presumes McNown turns into Manning. Unfortunately, about all they have in common is that they put on their game pants one leg at a time.
Can you see what a hopeless mess this is, Virginia? Team sources say the Bears won’t be sold in your lifetime, but do you really believe that’s what your dad would have wanted?
I don’t. Think about it. You, Virginia Marion, were the first born–Gin to your dad. About two years later came George Jr., or Mugs. Your parents had planned to have many more children, but your mother suffered an aneurysm after Mugs’ birth. The doctor said no more pregnancies.
That aneurysm, Virginia, effectively put you in charge of the headache that has been the Bears. Mugs, bless him, didn’t even outlive your father.
But surely Papa Bear figured one of your offspring could take over. “Oh-for-11,” an insider says. Your son Tim seems like the most qualified but hasn’t always lived up to your expectations.
So how much more shame do you want to subject your father’s legacy to? In his autobiography he writes of Soldier Field victories that “gave a lot of people pleasure.” But when you lose the way you’ve been losing, you’re responsible for inflicting equal pain.
I’ve heard from many fans since Sunday. They want you to sell. They say things like, “The only way I can protest is by not going or watching, which is like cutting off your nose to spite your face.”
This is a public trust you own. To your credit, you have never abused the privilege by riding it to fame or fortune. You’re as far from Georgia Frontiere as Granny Clampett is from Eva Gabor’s Lisa Douglas. You and your husband Ed still live modestly and quietly in Des Plaines. There’s talk you’d be afraid to sell–the Bears would bring $500 million, easily–because some of your children have had enough problems without giving them their $30 million cut.
But the time has come to seriously consider it.
You’ve reached the fine line between persevering and blindly clinging. There would be no shame in moving on. Times change. Now the only way you and your family can survive in this 31-team shark fight is if you go outside, hire a general manager with a track record and give him complete control. But you’d rather sell than do that, wouldn’t you?
Let go, Virginia. Do it for Chicago, which deserves so much better than this. Do it for your dad.