Thoughts while trying not to watch the 2-9 Bears and the 1-10 49ers play football Sunday at Soldier Field:
— Snow! Nice!
— No, wait. I’ll have to shovel when I get home.
— Clue for 1 Down in a Sun-Times crossword puzzle Saturday: Ticket waster. Six letters. Answer: No show. Perfect. Prescient. A lot of people with Bears tickets decided they would rather do something besides sit in the snow and watch bad football Sunday.
— Hey, buddy. Yeah, you. The guy yelling, “Hit him anyway!’’ as 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick runs out of bounds in the first quarter. Kaepernick’s kneeling during the National Anthem and your yelling at him for it are the same exercise in free speech. But trying to tell you that would be like talking to a goalpost. So, never mind.
— Eventually, Josh Bellamy is going to get this whole catching-the-football-thing down. But if this were his freshman year in college, he’d find himself playing cornerback next week.
— Would purchasing a snowblower be smart or emasculating?
— Bears wide receiver Daniel Braverman hasn’t caught an NFL pass yet, but because this is Chicago, he should have his own radio and TV shows soon. One can’t help but think of a young Brian Scalabrine.
— This isn’t inclement weather. “Inclement’’ means “not kind or merciful.’’ It’s 33 degrees, and a soft, beautiful snow is falling. But the Bears and the 49ers just finished the first quarter without completing a pass. Guys, we’re not talking a blizzard here. The weather is clement by December standards.
— Pope Clement I was executed by being tied to an anchor and thrown into the sea. So don’t tell me cut day is tough.
— A cursory glance at the game suggests the Bears are winning and thus blowing their chance for the second overall pick in next year’s draft. Way to go, fellas.
— Men’s bicycles have a horizontal crossbar, and women’s bikes have a low, slanted crossbar. Is this somebody’s idea of a sick joke?
— Do you get the feeling coaches are mad when they have to walk onto the field to show concern for injured players?
— How about those Cubs!
— Pope Clement VIII may have been the first pope to drink coffee. Go ahead and laugh, but it’s right there in Wikipedia.
— A good number of fans went home after halftime. I hope they can live with their warm, dry selves.
— The University of Washington, which is headed to the College Football Playoff, played its first three games against Rutgers, Idaho and Portland State. So, yeah, good system.
— Portland State’s president is named Wim Wiewel. That’s pronounced Vim VEE-vell.
— In the days leading up to the game, everybody was screaming for the Bears to run the ball against the 49ers. Now that they are running it, and not scoring, fans at Soldier Field are screaming for Matt Barkley to throw the ball. The Bears can’t win, except, perhaps, against the 49ers. Did I mention that winning would hurt their draft position?
— How would I describe the snow? It’s falling so hard it would have obscured Jay Cutler’s bad body language.
— Bellamy just caught a 31-yard pass (yes, really), and slid in the grass a good eight yards while being tackled. That might be the coolest thing all day. You know, if I had been watching.
— Men who go shirtless at bad-weather football games are either workout freaks or obese. There is no in-between.
— Kaepernick’s problem is that he can’t throw a football. With 10 minutes left in the game, the Soldier Field video board says the 49ers have minus-three passing yards. That’s probably why Blaine Gabbert has replaced Kaepernick.
— There are few things more puzzling or disorienting than a fan in a Shea McClellin jersey.
— The snow isn’t sticking much to the field, which gives me hope I won’t have to shovel when I get home. But now I remember that there are heating coils underneath the Soldier Field sod.
— Holland, Mich., has heated sidewalks and streets. Wake up, Chicago metro area!
— Jaquiski Tartt is the 49ers’ starting free safety.
— The announced attendance is 46,622, and the announced number of no shows is 13,160. I don’t think so.
— The Bears win 26-6. I’m told that Barkley was pretty good but that the San Francisco defense was so bad that receivers were wide open the whole afternoon. I still don’t know if the guy is any good. I do know that everybody in town has him penciled in for an epic quarterback battle next year.
— I don’t understand people who have toilet paper hanging under the roll instead of over it.
— “We knew we were capable of winning this game,’’ Barkley says afterward.
— As it turns out, that was the problem.
