We Believe.

Ask any of my friends what I would do were I to be named the Dictator of Planet Earth and you'll be met with an exhausted, almost droning response: "He would end the internet." Despite DaBearsBlog, a brand I have proudly grown for two decades, being an utter impossibility without it, the internet is responsible for all-but-destroying sports media, completely dismantling the concept of sports writing, and dehumanizing sports discourse writ large. The insightful newspaper commentaries of Bob Ryan, Jerry Izenberg, and Dan Jenkins have been replaced by the racist diatribes of PackersPenis696969696969. What was once singularly the purview of the old drunk at the end of the bar - the one who hated Randall Cunningham and Warren Moon but could never really explain why - is now the domain of the everyday. Hell, not even the everyday. The every second.

Sports conversations are crass now. They are ugly. The reason is anonymity. Anonymity is impossible in the barroom, or the corner store, or the stadium, because everyone in those locations can both (a) see your face and (b) punch it. Until the internet, you had to run into someone wearing a Lions Starter jacket randomly to rag on their defensive injuries. Or even better, you had to attend a game where the Lions were playing. This was, of course, back when people attending sporting events did so in stadiums designed exclusively for consuming the sporting event. Now, sports fandom has come to be defined by the amount of trolling one can do on the social media platform of their choice. And folks, to paraphrase the kids, that ain't it.

Sports fandom should be honest, and it should be predicated on a belief that defies mockery. (Site name notwithstanding.) Belief is the point. Belief is what makes the first week of the NFL season feel like a holiday. Belief does not require naivety or blind loyalty. It does not mean obsessively defending everything an organization does or does not do. Belief merely requires a suspension of cynicism and an emotional openness; to be thrilled, to be enthralled, to be moved in a way that only sports seem to achieve within us. When the team you root for rewards that belief, ecstasy. When the team doesn't, despair. That's sports. That's sports fandom. But none of it is possible without some semblance of belief.

Stephen Sondheim's Follies has a song called "Could I Leave You?" In the song, a wife sings to her husband, a husband who has cheated on her for years, a husband she has watched turn into a man she no longer recognizes, about their tiring relationship. She sings a profound line: "How do you wipe tears away when your eyes are dry?" What Sondheim is describing, in the voice of the ex-showgirl Phyllis, is an essential component of apathy: how can anyone grieve the death of a relationship when they no longer give a shit about its life? How can you be enthralled or deflated by an organization if you never believed in them from the start? How can you be elated by the 57-yard-field goal to win a ballgame if you don't believe? How can you get angry about a coach's decision-making costing your team a playoff game if you don't believe?

This is a space for believers, for those who consider the possible. And this is a Bears team that warrants belief. This is a team with (potential) rising stars at coach and quarterback. This is a team with some electric talent on the outside and pricey blockers inside. This is a team with enough defensive talent, and coaching, to keep them in every ballgame. It is far-fetched, perhaps, to call them Super Bowl contenders at the beginning of September 2025, but it is not far-fetched in the slightest to suggest they should be playing tournament football in early 2026. And every team in the tournament has a chance to play on that final Sunday in February.

This is the 2025 NFL season in Chicago. Believers welcome.