In another short pod, Jeff reacts to the Twitter belief that the Bears should not have made the Mack trade because of cap ramifications years down the road.
Worry About Winning Now, Not the Future Cap [AUDIO]
In another short pod, Jeff reacts to the Twitter belief that the Bears should not have made the Mack trade because of cap ramifications years down the road.
It’s truly the only period of off-season for the NFL. Other than the rare injury at an OTA, nothing of relevance takes place until teams report to training camp. Here are some links for you to enjoy.
[Side Note: When searching for links, I was amazed at just how many blogs there are now and how shitty most of them are.]
“I didn’t want to blow the opportunity,” the intensively private McCaskey told the Sun-Times last week in a rare sitdown interview commemorating the team’s upcoming 100th season. “I didn’t want them to think of me as some little old lady that’s just hanging around. And, ‘What’s she really doing here?’
“I wanted to let them know how much I cared about the team, and all of them.”
A little old lady?
“Well,” she said, smiling, “I am.” That’s an excerpt from Patrick Finley’s excellent sit down with Virgina McCaskey on the newly-designed (and wonderful) Sun-Times website.
I don’t have much interest in the beverage but I admire this man’s procedural dedication.
And as always, PLEASE DO NOT DRINK AND DRIVE. There is always a cab. Always a LYFT. Hell, there’s almost always someone you can call to pick you up and take you home. Driving after even a few drinks simply isn’t worth it. So please please please don’t do it.
One of the great things about the partnership between Ted Phillips and George McCaskey has been their committment to charity. And never has that been more apparent that their new initiative. From Larry Mayer on Da Site:
In honor of their 100th season, the Bears will donate a total of $1 million, divided into increments of $100,000 to 10 different charities nominated by fans.
All charities located within the Bears’ market will be eligible to benefit from the Community All-Pros program. Applications can be submitted online at chicagobears.com/communityallpros from now through May 31.
“Part of the impetus for the Community All-Pros program is we didn’t want to just look back on the last 100 years, we wanted to look forward,” said Bears chairman George H. McCaskey. “We’re looking forward to it. We want the fans to be involved in the decision-making process and in the nomination process itself.”
All 10 charities will be nominated by fans across Illinois and the defined Bears home market. Nine charities will be selected by a Bears’ internal committee and announced in mid-July. The 10th charity will be narrowed down to three choices by the internal committee before it is opened to fan voting in October; the final charity will be announced the week prior to the last 2019 regular-season home game.
Each charity will be honored at a Bears’ 2019 home game. Fans are encouraged to share this information with charities they are invested in.
“We’re really excited about it,” McCaskey said. “We think it’s a great way to kick off the second century of the Chicago Bears.”
So fill out an application in the link above before the end of the month if you have a worth charity you want supported!
To honor @PanchoBilla1’s wishes, @JonahJavad and I have reached out to @TeachersDeskBuf.
For every $10 donated here: https://t.co/HRSbMqtLFl a needy child will get a backpack filled with $100 in school supplies.
Add the hashtag #PANCHOSPACK in the notes when you donate.
— Del Reid (@DelReid) May 15, 2019
This week the PGA Championship will be held right up the road from me at Bethpage Black. (As you’re reading this Wednesday, I’m at the site watching the gents practice.) Because there’s almost nothing happening around the Bears, I’m writing about golf to commemorate the event.
Tiger Woods wasn’t made a human.
His father Earl, the sporting world’s Victor Frankenstein, never concerned himself with such trivial things as “human” in the lab. Yes, Earl and his wife Kultida gave their son a human name – Eldrick, for those of you who don’t know. I’m sure they even taught him to use a toilet for both numbers one and two. But creating a fully-functional human male was never the priority. Hell, it barely made the to-do list.
Earl set out to make a monster and that monster would play golf. A couple years into his life, Eldrick no longer existed. At two, “Tiger” Woods was whacking a 3 wood on national television in front of Mike Douglas and Bob Hope. At three, Tiger shot 48 on a nine-hole course. At eight, Tiger broke 80. At twelve, 70. By then, Eldrick had almost never existed. Because once the grip of a golf club touched his tiny paws, Tiger was all that could be.
———
In the inevitable documentary series on Tiger Woods – one that will strike up a media bidding war for his participation – Chapter One will be everything from his birth until April 1997; the creation and emergence of Frankenstein’s golf monster. If there was a junior or amateur tournament to be played, Tiger played it. And dominated it. Multiple times. The specter of this phenom lingered over the PGA Tour like a dark storm cloud on championship Sunday. The Craig Stadlers and Lee Janzens knew he was coming. They just hoped they could get their rounds in and a post a score.
Chapter Two will be the transition of that dominance to the tour – from a twelve-shot victory at the 1997 Masters to beating Rocco Mediate in a playoff at the 2008 US Open on a broken leg. There’s very little drama during this stretch of Tiger’s career. Just win after win after win after win.
But Chapter Three will be the one that draws the ratings and it began in the darkness of Thanksgiving night 2009 with an SUV wrecking in a Floridian driveway and an angry Swedish wife attacking Tiger with, what else, a Mike Douglas 3 wood.
———
On that night, Tiger became Eldrick again.
Eldrick Tont Woods, just a dude in his 30s caught cheat-texting a sidepiece from his couch. A guy who had done so many seemingly impossible things on the golf course was doing something thousands upon thousands of idiot guys have done on couches around the world: sending a message to someone they shouldn’t.
What followed that night was not just the downfall of one of the world’s greatest athletes. It was the total collapse of a human being.
It started with the women. One after another they came forward. And Eldrick had no choice but to watch his sexual history play out on the front pages of newspapers across the world. Nobody felt sorry for him. He made his own bed. (Or in these cases, the chambermaids at whatever Four Seasons he brought the ladies to did.) But each story still made us cringe. The details. Flights to Australia. Chain restaurant hostesses.
Sponsors deserted him. The golf media he’d kept at a distance for years relished their opportunity to take shots. There was an embarrassing public speech and a 45-day rehab. (For what, who knows?) And soon it didn’t take long for the off-course mess to find it’s way onto the fairways.
[Author’s Note: There is so much to list during this period. Here is just a sampling.]
From 2014 through 2017, Tiger Woods would only play 6 of the 16 majors. He would only make the cut in 2 of those. This was Tiger Woods?
There are so many images from this period. The Santa photo. The details in Wright Thompson’s brilliant profile. Pissing in a bucket beside the bed. The monster who did not seem beatable was so thoroughly beaten.
Except somehow, he wasn’t.
