All better, Bears fans. All better because Senior Disorganization Figure Ted Phillips said so.
First, Phillips sent a letter to Bears season-ticket holders to inform them of a price-hike following a 3-13 season.
Yes, following a 3-13 season, it’ll cost more to see this once-proud franchise play its version of football.
But the Senior Disorganization Figure also proclaimed that the team wouldn’t stink like that again.
See? All better, Bears fans. If Phillips says it, it must be a true fact, indisputable, guaranteed (but not one of those money-back kinds).
And what great timing. The price-hike letter came less than a week after the Tribune’s wonderfully conceived and executed eight-page special report on the Bears’ “Decade of Decline’’ that delineated the franchise’s death spiral from the Super Bowl to the third pick in the upcoming draft.
A look at the 10 biggest Bears headlines of the past decade: the one each year that had people talking.
(Brad Biggs)
But apparently, we didn’t delineate it well enough.
An emailer angrily informed me that we didn’t slap enough blame on the aformentioned Phillips, who has been as constant in that decade of decline as any garden-variety McCaskey.
Guilty. I should’ve noted Phillips’ constant spot as a senior disorganization figure, the guy who played “Moe’’ in the Bears’ famous “Three Stooges’’ press conference in which then-GM Jerry Angelo and then-coach Lovie Smith followed Phillips in demanding change while also praising continuity. Nyuk, nyuk nyuk.
But wait. There’s more. Another emailer angrily came at me for not slapping enough blame on former defensive coordinator Mel Tucker.
Palm to forehead. How’d we miss that batting-practice fastball?
But in our defense, which is more defense than Tucker coached, trying to blame everyone for the Bears’ death spiral is like playing Whack-A-Mole over the time-space continuum.
Memo to Joe Knowles, Tribune Sports’ High Lord & Master: We’re gonna need a bigger boat.
So, I suggest we plan on expanding to 16 pages in 2027 when we do “Two Decades of Decline.’’
A look at the faces at Halas Hall.
Browns owners are cutting ticket prices in 40 percent of the stadium because “it’s the right thing to do for our fans.’’ No, the right thing to do is sell the team. Are you listening, Bears?
How did Kurt Warner spend the night after he was elected to the Pro Football Hall Of Fame? He told the “Bickley-Marotta’’ radio show in Arizona that the shuttle driver couldn’t find his hotel in Houston, so he had his family get out and walk, and they stopped at a Burger King and spent $90 on the celebratory dinner. There has to be an endorsement in there.
LeBron James quote: “Charles Oakley for president.’’
Let me see if I have this right: Scotty Bowman is the winningest coach in NHL history, owns 14 Stanley Cup rings as a coach or executive, was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1991 and even then would go on to coach or influence eight other Stanley Cup champions, including the last three Blackhawks winners as senior advisor of hockey operations, and now — now? — Bowman was named a Distinguished Honoree of the Order of Hockey in Canada.
Congratulations, yeah but the question is what took so long to award Bowman an honor that should be named after him? I thought they knew hockey in Canada.
New Bruins coach Bruce Cassidy was a Hawks prospect decades ago when a knee injury wrecked his career. He coached the Jaromir Jagr Capitals to the playoffs in 2002-03 and was fired the next season. When asked what has changed since he was last in the NHL, he noted the lack of mullets.
Baseball will experiment with a rule that places a runner on second base to start an extra inning. I think the idea came from Mat Albers’ appearances.
Because Stevie Sunshine is a pleaser, not a teaser, I’m starting a new service for those who need to vent — at me, the Bulls, the Bears, White Sox, Cubs, Blackhawks, local, national, whoever and whatever. For now, I’m calling it The Shipload of Sarcasm. Who knows, it might change. Either way, it’s modeled on the mailbags that all the popular kids around here do. They ask you for questions you have about the local team they cover, but here, I just want your anger, hate, whatever you got. If this were a different time, I could call this Hatebook. My loss. But still, I feel confident that people who have read me get the idea. So, tweet comments and questions to @steverosenbloom or email them to srosenbloom@chicagotribune.com, and once a week I’ll run them back. Keeping that Reinsdorf-Paxson-Forman bile or McCaskey venom inside is just not healthy. Get it out. Think of this as a health initiative. The spewing lines are open. Operators are standing by.
The deadline to declare for the draft has passed. The Senior Bowl is in the books. The NFL scouting combine is a scant three weeks away. Draft season is fully engaged and the many prospects are already well along the proverbial road to the podium.
Which players will get that invite to the 2017 NFL draft in Philadelphia? Plenty of those among my Top 50 will get that coveted invitation to Philadelphia, so let’s take a look at my Big Board heading into the combine at the end of the month.
— John Harris, Special To The Washington Post
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