Bears Ownership Keeps Ignoring Vital Lesson Blackhawks and Cubs Taught

Fans have loved to hammer Chicago Bears ownership for the past three decades. Ever since their mismanagement of that great team in the 1980s to the persistent dumpster fire seen over the past couple years, its been one long string of disappointments. Virginia McCaskey and her sons may mean well and insist they want win. Problem is they've consistently shown they don't understand how. One Super Bowl appearance in the past 31 years? Four playoff appearances since the year 2000? That is unbecoming of a charter NFL franchise. As a result the McCaskeys have taken a beating in the media for a long time. More vocal fans are pleading with them to sell the team. Why? It's not because they refuse to spend money, which is a persistent myth. The truth is they don't truly understand football. Virginia obviously never played or coached the game. Her sons Michael and George, who have traded the chairman job since they inherited the team, had no football backgrounds either. Michael served in the Peace Corps and taught business at major colleges. George split time between being an attorney and working in television. These people didn't pursue football out of love. It sort of fell in their laps.

Bears ownership proving to have loyalty in the wrong people

Rick Morrissey of the Chicago Sun-Times brought up a great point about the situation facing the McCaskeys. Sure they want to win, but the state of the NFL doesn't make this an urgent matter. Why? They make money regardless if they win or lose.

"The NFL offers a mixed message to its owners. Winning is supposed to be everything, but the truth is that there is no punitive cost to losing. Because NFL teams share revenue from massive national TV contracts, there are only varying levels of ungodly wealth. The Bears went 3-13 last season, yet their value grew 6 percent to $2.85 billion this year, according to Forbes magazine. That makes them the seventh-most valuable team in the NFL. When in the last three decades were they among the top seven football teams in the league?"

It goes beyond that though. For years the team has insisted their hires at GM represent the absolute peak of decision-making in the organization. Problem is that's not true. The buck doesn't stop with the GM, it stops with team president Ted Phillips. That much has been made clear with Phillips' constant presence around every major decision regarding the organization from a football perspective, and that's a huge issue.

Phillips had no football background

The two franchises most revered in Chicago these days are the Cubs and Blackhawks. Both are perennial playoff contenders who have each won a championship since 2015. How did they get to this point? Their owners were smart enough to do one key thing. They put sports guys in charge at the top. Rocky Wirtz pursued John McDonough to become Blackhawks team president in 2007. McDonough had spent the previous 30+ years working in various front offices. He was part of a semi-pro soccer league in the early 1980s before finding work with the Chicago Cubs in 1983. His efforts helped the organization produce some quality teams in 1984 and 2003. So when Wirtz hired him he was already well-versed in what it takes to manage a successful sports franchise. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQtrukqzTZQ Cubs owner Tom Ricketts did much the same thing. He pursued Theo Epstein and made him team president. Epstein played baseball in high school and edited his colleges' sports news column. He had a burning passion for the game. Eventually he worked his way up to becoming GM of the Boston Red Sox and they won the World Series in 2004, 2007 and 2011. He was a proven baseball mind. Phillips? He was a tax accountant in his early life with no significant background in football. He didn't even get involved with the game until the McCaskeys took over following the death of George Halas in 1983. Ten years later he was Vice President of Operations and six years after that he was President. The Bears have made the playoffs four times during his run at the job. Does his lack of background in football (or any sport) play a part?

Top NFL teams have "football guys" at the top

This shouldn't be a hard example to follow. One merely has to look around the NFL and the most successful organizations have a football guy in charge. Patriots owner Robert Kraft played the game in college and was a lifelong fan. He also had experience owning a sports franchise prior to buying New England. Dick Cass, team president for the Baltimore Ravens, captained his football team in high school and worked for years helping NFL teams with their various operations before getting his current job. Last but not least? Green Bay Packers team president Mark Murphy played for eight years with the Washington Redskins. So ask this question. If you owned a football franchise and you had to choose between a career accountant who never played the game and a former player who has a business degree to run it, who would you choose? Well the McCaskeys chose wrong. Therein lay the great conundrum.