Kenneth Sothman, Bears Superfan



Tony, quite frankly, you've made my night.

Now I've been trying to wrap my mind around the whole Rex situation over the past 24 hours or so, and truthfully, I can't quite understand it. As I told Marcus earlier, this could quite possibly be the most heated in-season Chicago sport debate I've ever lived through, it even blows the White-Flag Trade right out of the water. But then that reminded me of a conversation a friend of mine and I had on the sidelines of the Ball State/Northern Illinois game...

(Which really quick, I really hope everybody in the Illinois area took time to at least watch Wolfe play once, because to put it simply the kid is dynamite. He torched Ball State for 352 yards rushing, and is probably the best MAC-player since Randy Moss. He's going to be fun to watch in the NFL.)

I had mentioned to my friend how on this blog I was defending the idea that for the Chicago Bears to win, they need to get rid of the "Monsters of the Midway" persona and identify themselves as their own team (Lovie-Ball!). That's when he pointed this out: "You know Ken, you have to realize, that before that Chicago Bears team, Chicago was known as a losing city. In fact, you have to remember, in our life-times (I'm 20 years old) we've been pretty spoiled..."

It turns out he was right:
1991: Bulls win NBA Championship
1992: Bulls win NBA Championship
1993: Bulls win NBA Championship, White Sox reach ALCS
1994: White Sox are on top during strike-season, Bulls win 55 games
1995: Jordan returns, Bears make play-offs through Wild-Card
1996: Bulls win NBA Championship
1997: Bulls win NBA Championship
1998: Bulls win NBA Championship, Cubs win Wild Card
1999: Sosa becomes first player to hit 60 home runs back to back.
2000: White Sox win Central Division
2001: Bears win NFC Central Division
2002: Chicago down year
2003: Cubs reach NLCS
2004: Bulls make play-offs for first time without Jordan
2005: Sox win World Series, Bears win NFC Central¸ Bulls make play-offs
2006: Bears on pace to win NFC Central, White Sox remain competitive

By looking at that, I can easily argue that I’ve lived through possibly the greatest 20-year period in the history of Chicago sports. And that’s not including anything the Chicago Blackhawks have done, or the MLS Championship the Fire have won. But what does this have to do with Rex you ask?

Well, it made me start thinking about the people that were age 20 or older around the year 1986. For people around my age, we’ve only known Chicago to be a winning city. In fact, we expect all of our Chicago teams to be great. Losing just isn’t something known or is expected. Thus, we probably can’t truly appreciate a winning season half as much as somebody, for example, that would be in their 40’s now. Because for all they know, a long losing dry spell could be right around the corner.

But then you have to look closer to see the ugly truth of this time period. The Bears have primarily been the worse Chicago team. In fact, ever since post-1990, the Chicago Bears have fielded only about two legitimate teams. And those two teams didn’t even make it to the conference championship!

So in a sense, maybe I understand the “must-win now” urgency that the older Bears fans are feeling. They, unlike myself, recognize that this could be there last great shot at a Super Bowl in a long time, and even if the team only has two losses now, they don’t want to take any risks letting that one chance go.

Even if it means taking out the player (Rex Grossman) that best guarantees them their Super bowl dreams, because he’s also the best player that has a chance to turn those dreams into nightmares.

Now I don’t want to make anybody on here feel old or anything, but for the older bloggers, does any truth ring to this?

Onto a few other things:

- Gail makes a great point about how no players on the Bears would probably speak out in the media about Rex, which actually ran through my mind during the interview. We need the interns to get the inside scoop over this like Sports Illustrated seemed to have been able to do over the Alex Rodriguez situation in New York with the Yankees…
- In fact, Gail makes a lot of great points, which makes me jealous that I can’t be a professional quarterback when I’m done at Ball State that can get paid lots of money for making mistakes…
- I’m pretty confident that if the Bears are down at half-time on Sunday, that Rex is going to be hearing the boo-birds. Quite frankly, this whole topic is going to get even more interesting quite fast. But one more question before I leave…
- Why isn’t anybody fighting for Sportin’ Orton? I know I’ve joked about it, but didn’t he lead us last year?