The 2020 Chicago Bears (or whenever they start playing) had better be a Super Bowl contending team, otherwise Ryan Pace’s next job will be as GM for Pop Warner League team. The 8-8 but actually worse than their record indicated Bears first signed Robert Quinn to a 5-year, $70 million deal, allowing them to release underachieving former first round draft choice Leonard Floyd. Then, the Bears traded a 4th round compensatory pick for QB Nick Foles, former Super Bowl MVP with the Eagles who was injured and replaced in Jacksonville.
Everyone in town wanted someone to replace Mitchell Trubisky, but who was the subject of argument. First, the Browns signed Case Keenum, which I was very happy about because he was considered a viable option to some. I however, think he’s a bum. Tom Brady is over the hill; Phillip Rivers isn’t really an option here; Drew Brees and Ryan Tannehill are staying put; Jameis Winston throws too many interceptions. I still like Marcus Mariota but he signed with the Raiders. Teddy Bridgewater was the best available, I think, but to have signed him would have meant that Bridgewater was the starter and Trubisky was out even before training camp. Andy Dalton would have been a safe pick, but he’s never won anything.
As written in the Chicago newspapers, Pace is using the more expensive free agent market to cover up failures of Pace’s picks in the draft. Allen Robinson to replace Kevin White from 2015. Now, Quinn to replace Floyd, the 2016 first rounder and Foles for Trubisky. The only one of Pace’s picks not replaced was 2018 number 8 overall pick Roquan Smith, who has shown flashes, but the jury’s still out on him.
Ryan Pace is a very secretive person, He makes a comment on the Bear radio show once per week, but there’s no questions permitted, and he faces the media at the beginning and then at the end of the season. This keeps away the press and fans, who are often rabid, and keeps the tough questions away from Pace. But if Foles takes the QB job away from Trubisky, and depending on who the Bears draft this year, another non-playoff performance and Pace will be run out of town, much as Pace’s predecessors Phil Emery and Jerry Angelo were, and they deserved it.

Think of Joe Montana playing for the Chiefs. Ron Santo in a White Sox uniform. Wayne Gretzky wearing New York Rangers or St. Louis Blues sweaters. Chris Sale in a Red Sox uniform. Now add Tom Brady in a Tampa Bay Buccaneers jersey, because that’s what we will see during the next NFL season.
Brady said goodbye to New England on social media yesterday morning, then it was reported that Brady received a $30 million per year contract for two years. The Bucs have a very good defense and some weapons on offence but Jameis Winston’s choices and interceptions kept the team from being elite. While I’m surprised Brady went to TB, it was a relative certainty that warm weather would be a factor. Brady’s from California, which made the Chargers a viable option along with the no-longer-in-California-but–close Raiders. Florida was the other obvious choice: the Dolphins still are too far from contending to be a realistic option. Same for Jacksonville, but Tampa’s defense is one of the top units, and they did have enough talent to have made Winston at least partially effective.
To be honest, Brady’s play has been on a downward trajectory for some time, but last year, it really showed. His completion percentage has fallen from 67.4 in 2016 to 65.8 in 2018 cratering to 60.8 last season. He threw 24 TD’s last season, his lowest total since 2006. True, he no longer had the likes of Rob Gronkowski on the receiving end anymore, but for the last couple of years, it has been wide receiver by committee/who’s available on waivers time in New England. He only threw 8 picks last year, showing that his decision making is still high, and maybe that’s enough.
The question is – what happens to Winston? He has a big league arm having thrown for over 5,000 yards last season, and while not as mobile as Patrick Mahomes or Deshawn Watson, can keep plays alive with his feet. Of course, having been the first QB to throw for over 30 TD’s and 30 pics.
In Boston, they are, like everywhere, faced with the pandemic and now, the streak of championships and continually contending for championships is over. I don’t know who wrote it for him, but Bill Belichick’s social media farewell was almost touching. The rest of the country is just happy that the Patriot Nation will now, finally, be quiet.

What do we do now? The Covid-19 pandemic and resultant counter measures have shut down all sports for at least the next two months. The sports networks have to find something to show, although ESPN was showing its great 30 for 30 documentaries. I have suggested that the NBA, NHL, and MLB Networks use this time to show old games in their entirety. Show the games with the original announcers and if possible, some of the commercials. While it certainly would not replace live games, I think it would be cool to see. (I would especially like to see some ABA games.)
The newspapers are in worse shape – they have to come up with new stories every day. Fortunately for the short term, the NFL Players’ Association approval of the new Collective Bargaining Agreement gives them something to write about. The vote was very close, but will allow there to be a 17th game of the regular season. Locally, it will raise the salary cap to a new level allowing the Bears more money to screw up, I mean spend on players. Of course, it has taken the papers little time to suggest that the new CBA will allow the Bears to jettison Mitch Trubisky easier after this season if he doesn’t pan out. NFL free agency will continue on time meaning the playing fate of Tom Brady, Phillip Rivers and many others are up in the air, but this will at least allow for something to report on.
As for me, I realize that I spend a lot of time watching hockey. Most of my evenings are spent in front of my iPad checking games around the league. Now, that’s on hiatus. What to do, especially with the family going to be together for an extended period? Well, there’s that stack of books I’ve been meaning to read. (Just finished Roger Daltry’s autobiography, now Midnight in Chernobyl.) I have a huge backlog in comic book, and of course, work remains constant, so I’m sure I’ll survive.
Hopefully, so will you gentle reader. Please don’t freak out – take reasonable precautions, wash your hands frequently. When I come up with something, I will be here, posting away.
Stay safe.

One must be hearty to be a sports fan. If your team is very good, they have a better than average chance to win every game that they play. If they’re terrible, maybe you watch hoping that they’ll catch another team on a bad night and come up with a win. If not, you know they weren’t very good to begin with.
The toughest position to be in is a fan of a team that shows spurts of being good but then they play horribly for a stretch. For the 2019-2020 Chicago Blackhawks, this has been the conundrum that they have been in. They can play very well, for a stretch of a game, for a period or two, or even for a few games, but then they can’t get out of their own way. In games, they either have a horrific start, surrendering 2-3 goals in quick succession, or they themselves start fast and play well. In the first instance, the Hawks mount a furious comeback but fall short, or in the latter, melt under the pressure of the other team.
At various times this season, the Blackhawks have been able to play well enough to put together a run of 3-4 wins in a row. Whenever this happens, it gives the fans, who are spoiled with the Cup wins over the past several years, a little hope. Then they go into a funk. Case in point, the Hawks played well right before the All-Star break then had their week off break (every team gets one during the season). After a long break, a team either comes back rested and playing well (after a period or so of rust) or they never should have taken the break – they come back out of whack. The Blackhawks had a 5 game Western Canada swing in which they went 1-4. At that point, I knew the season was over although I kept a small sliver of hope. That ended when they went into Detroit, the worst team in the league and stunk up the joint, losing 2-1. Losing to the Blues last Sunday was just pounding the last nail.
Going into their third consecutive season out of the playoffs, something has to change. The fans of course have been howling for GM Stan Bowman’s head for years now, and this summer, they may finally get it. Bowman’s moves were good in 2013-2015 in winning two Stanley Cups in three years, but his draft picks haven’t panned out. Other than Artemi Panerin and Alex DeBrincat and perhaps Adam Boquist, the rest of the haul has failed to cohere with the veteran core into a consistently good team. The acquisitions of Dominik Kubalik and Dylan Strome in trades have been great acquisitions, but, other than Boquist, the blue line play has been deficient.
Some want to blame Jeremy Colliton, the man who replaced future Hall of Fame coach and winner of three Cups in Chicago, Joel Quenneville. Perhaps Quenneville had lost the locker room (no proof of it – the players seem to still revere the man), but Colliton’s system has not worked and it seems like his cold, corporate demeaner has led to a weird lack of urgency from the team at various times.
That of course leaves the players. Toews and Kane have tried to hoist the team on their backs. Kubalik has been a pleasant 30+ goal surprise. DeBrincat and Strome have each taken a step back this season, but both are worth keeping. Injuries to Andrew Shaw, Cole DeHaan and Zach Smith have hurt the club (although I have not liked Smith at all when he was playing). Bowman took deserved heat for trading goalie Robin Lehner at the deadline because it looked like he was the number 1 of the future with 34-year-old Corey Crawford in the last year of his contract. It’s in goal where the Hawks have been strongest all season.
It is once again, the defensemen who are the weak link. Perhaps the Penguins knew something in getting rid of Oli Maata. Conor Murphy is OK to me, but not great. There’s a million miles on Duncan Keith; he’s not the same anymore at all. No one can blame Brent Seabrook this season since he was shut down for three surgeries.
So, where do the Hawks go from here? If they get rid of Bowman and Colliton, who do they replace them with? I think it’s fairly obvious who has to stay: Toews, Kane, DeBrincat, Kubalik, Strome, even Crawford and probably Keith, but who can they bring in for one last Cup run for the core? Or is it too late? Should they begin the full rebuild? Will Toews and Kane accept it? Will the fans?
I have no answers, but it is very frustrating to watch a team in the throes of limbo – not good enough to be a real contender or even a playoff participant, not bad enough for a shot at one of the top picks in the NHL Draft.

I have not been a fan of Blackhawks’ GM Stan Bowman in the years since the 2015 Stanley Cup Championship. His moves have been mostly suspect; his draft picks have been predominantly lackluster (with the exception of Panarin and DeBrincat). Getting rid of Joel Quenneville, was a short term, “we need to blame somebody, just not me” kind of move. Two straight years of failing to make the playoffs put Bowman squarely on the hot seat, and the performance of the team has been wildly inconsistent this season. I know that hockey is streaky, but the Hawks will put together a mini-run of wins, get to the bottom rung or within sight of the last playoff spot, then they will play badly for a similar stretch.
This is the dilemma that Bowman has found himself in for a couple of years now: should they go in for a full rebuild knowing that that will not go over well with Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane, or acquire assets to push for one more playoff run? The Hawks appeared to be playing better, then went into the NHL All-Star break and off week and went on a Western Canada road trip where they went 1-4. As much as even we diehard fans love the team, if they were to make the playoffs, it would be an extremely short stay.
So, all eyes were on the NHL Trade Deadline yesterday. All season, it was obvious that pending unrestricted free agent defenseman Erik Gustafsson would be traded unless the team played EXTREMELY well. It is easy with 20/20 hindsight to say that Gustafsson should have been traded last summer coming off a 60-point season. This year, Gustafsson has been a disappointment with only 26 points (6 goals, 20 assists and a -8 +/-). I was never a fan of his because for an offensive defenseman, he was still horrible on defense. Orr, Coffey, even offensive defensemen like Kris Letang play some defense. Gustafsson was a defensive liability and didn’t score enough this season to merit a big contract with Chicago anyway. Still, all they got from the Flames was a third-round draft pick. In hockey, the lower a pick is the higher the odds that the player will ever become an NHL regular.
OK, that’s bad luck on Bowman’s part. Then there’s the trade of goaltender Robin Lehner. It was a shock to have a Vezina Award finalist go unsigned last summer and even more surprising that the Hawks picked him up at a reduced rate. This was an astute move by the 46-year-old GM. Instead, Bowman traded Lehner, who reportedly was giving the Hawks a home town discount because he liked it here so much in return for Malcolm Subban, P.K. Subban’s brother who has not been able to turn into a sustainable number 1 or 2 goalie, defensive prospect Slava Demin and a second round pick was an underwhelming return at best.
Yes, we still have Corey Crawford who still has something left in the tank, but at 34 and with his hefty contract ending, it might be time to let Crawford retire or try and find another place to play. I thought that the Lehner signing was terrific – you have a slightly younger goaltender on your roster who is excellent, you can give the $6 million per year that Crawford was getting paid to help you sign Lehner. And then you can still have the young goalies in the pipeline who can fight for number 2 goalie or try to push out Lehner eventually.
So, they were in familiar territory: no-man’s land. As of today, however, the Blackhawks have put up the white surrender flag. They are in 12th place in the Western Conference, eight points out of a wild card spot with four teams ahead of them. According to NBC and most other pundits, the cut-off point for a wild card spot in the West is around 88 points. The Blackhawks are only on pace for 82 points and would need to collect 27 points in their final 20 games (think 13-6-1 record) to gain enough ground to give themselves a chance. Without Lehner particularly, this is almost unattainable.
As you may know, I share a nine-game season ticket package. All of my tickets have been used, which is good. I was able to watch the Hawks when they still believed they had a chance. The upcoming home games are going to be depressing. Time to watch the rest of the league and see whether Bowman can keep his job beyond the official end of the season.

Usually, when we talk about commissioners of the major sports leagues, there is contempt to full fledged hatred. Commissioners are not on the fans’ side – they are the employees (toadies?) of the owners, and their main job is to keep the money flowing to their bosses. Sometimes, the job is to act as judge of the activities of the other employees, mainly the coaches and players.
Looking at the major sports, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, while having some issues, generally is the least hated (from my perspective). NHL Commissioner Gary (“The count from Sesame Street”) Bettman will be hated forever because he has overseen two work stoppages including cancellation of the entire 2004-2005 season. That said however, he has increased the attention on the league, added more teams and certainly made the league more profitable, which is his main job, and has been a boon to the fans.
The biggest idiot has been NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell. The vain Goodell has proclaimed himself the “sheriff” of the league, but for the tanned, rich white man trying to punish the majority African American league has been nothing short of disaster. The Ray Rice incident; Colin Kaepernick; Bob Kraft under indictment for soliciting prostitution/human trafficking; the crisis of CTE – they have all been handled poorly under Goodell. He was the Gold Standard of inept, out of touch Sports Commissioners. Over the past few weeks however, Baseball Commissioner Rod Manfred has made a solid run at Goodell.
The Houston Astros sign stealing scandal is the biggest scandal since the Steroid Era. Again, there have always been attempts to steal signs in baseball, but this was the first time (to our knowledge) that technology/television cameras were used to steal signs. The fallout was swift: the Astros fired their manager and GM, the two players who became first time managers this year were also dismissed. However, Commissioner Manfred did very little actually. The team was fined, but no players were directly punished, and the Astros were not forced to relinquish their World Series title.
The Dodgers, who lost that World Series and themselves haven’t won a World Series since the 1980s, are pissed off. They feel like their title was stolen. Players around the league have been very open and forthright in saying that the Astro players who participated in the scandal should have been punished. Now, to be honest, Major League Baseball has gone from having the most contentious relationship with the union to over two decades of peace with the most powerful union in the country. How much could Manfred have punished the players under the collective bargaining agreement? Maybe not much, and maybe not much without lawsuits flying all over the place.
Manfred wasn’t done; he had to insert his foot deeply into his mouth. Reacting to people calling for the commissioner to rescind Astros title, Manfred said “The idea of an asterisk or asking for a piece of metal back seems like a futile act. People will always know that something was different about the 2017 season, and whether we made that decision right or wrong, we undertook a thorough investigation, and had the intestinal fortitude to share the results of that investigation, even when those results were not very pretty.”
Calling the World Series Trophy, a piece of metal downplays the will, drive and work baseball players do to be a champion. Maybe the trophy is metal, the gaudy rings are metal and jewels, but the ability to call yourself a champion, means a great deal: to the player, to the team, to the fans, to everyone. Even though I cannot skate, the three Stanley Cups that the Blackhawks won mean a great deal to me; just like the 1985 Bears or the 1990s Bulls or the 2006 White sox Championship. If it’s “just a piece of metal” why is Astros Owner Jim Crane so defiant in saying that they are keeping it and that the scandal had “no effect of the game.” If there are two more clueless people in the baseball/sports world than Manfred and Crane, I can’t think of them.
The only think that Manfred has done correctly is to personally go to the Spring Training parks and warn people not to throw at the Astros. Maybe they deserve it (except for the people who weren’t there in 2017-2018), but to purposely throw a hard ball at 90+ miles per hour at a person, the chances of serious and permanent injury are too high.
There will be a reckoning. Maybe there should be an asterisk? Maybe the Dodgers should be proclaimed champions? The players may not have been punished, but they are pariahs as much as Pete Rose or the Steroid cheats (although a couple may be going to Cooperstown soon).
Regardless, Rob Manfred’s reputation has taken a gargantuan hit with the players, and the fans. He may surpass Goodell yet…

This weekend, the NBA world comes to Chicago for the annual All-Star Game, the first time this city has hosted the event since 1988. Unlike that game, the city’s reaction this year has been muted at best, ignoring at worst.
Yes, the best players in the world will be here but other than LeBron James and maybe James Harden, there really aren’t any transcendent stars playing. Yes, there are a ton of young, up-and-coming stars like Giannis Antetokoumpo, Luka Doncic, Pascal Siakam and many others. The 1988 game had Jordan, Bird, Magic, Kareem, The Mailman, Charles Barkley, and more Hall of Famers. Plus, the players were icons already: the Lakers/Celtics rivalry, Jordan was a global celebrity, Jabbar was nearing the end of his unbelievable career, Barkley was being Charles. And it featured the Heavyweight Championship of Dunk Contests: Jordan vs. Dominique Wilkins. It was a show for the ages. It was like the Oscars for basketball. (This is not to say that we will probably look back on the players in this weekend’s game with awe when many of them make the Hall of Fame.)
It is fairly easy to see why the city isn’t as over-the-top about the All-Star Game. In 1988, the Bulls were a team on the rise with Jordan and Scottie Pippen about to rule the basketball world. The current Bulls are underperformers without a standout superstar (no Bulls are even playing in the game and only Zach LaVine participating in the 3-point shooting contest). Years of “rebuilding” with little to show it and relations between the fans and the media calling for the firing of EVP of Basketball Operations Jim Paxson and GM Gar Forman (“GarPax”). The 19-36 record at this year’s All-Star break doesn’t generate a lot of buzz either.
One thing that is an improvement over the 1988 All-Star Game is the representation from around the world. There are more players from outside the United States than I can remember. As a city with a huge number of people from other cultures. Also, it will have a heartwarming tribute to the late Kobe Bryant and his daughter.
I have not followed basketball for a number of years because the game itself is boring to me. I won’t spend much if any time watching the All-Star Game either. A lot of Chicagoans will be with me.