Like a lot of American men (and an increasing number of women), I’m in a regular-season NFL football pool.
I only joined this season, but the pool is based entirely on the Bears and their games and their weekly scores. If you live in Chicago, how much prep work do you need for predictions on mediocrity? Easy entry.
It’s called the John Rush Memorial Football Pool because John Rush, an active member and very much alive, keeps the scores and seemingly is the only one who understands the strangely complex rules. I sure don’t.
The league is made up mainly of artists, real professional painters and the like. So it’s a little nuts.
You’ve heard of herding cats. This, I believe, is more akin to herding squirrels. Not that I’m herding anything, nor is anyone, only that I’m now part of the scurry.
There’s no money involved, other than that the winner gets to pick the championship banquet spot and then has his meal and drink tab picked up by the others.
The real key is the shame and ignominy of finishing last. That poor soul receives the symbolic scarlet letter — in this case, a to-scale, plastic model of the Titanic, mounted on a stand, with an attached electrical cord that plugs in and lights up the staterooms of the doomed craft.
Artist Mark McMahon received the boat Sunday at the banquet spot, the Wolfhound Bar and Kitchen on North Elston Avenue. McMahon even had a paper bag that he briefly wore over his head, in lieu of sitting in public stocks somewhere. The Titanic is his for a year, to stare at like a curse, until he hopefully can rise above the waves.
Shame is a strong motivator. I finished second-to-last, partly because I forgot to send in my scores five times. Whew.
At any rate, the thing about the pool is that its forum quickly devolved into a passionate discussion about why the Bears suck. This, I believe, is what happens at every similar meeting throughout Bears Land. More specifically, the topic is why the Bears have been stuck in quarterback limbo — or hell — since, well, Sid Luckman three-quarters of a century ago.
Seeing Patrick Mahomes and Brock Purdy lead their teams to the Super Bowl was gasoline on the fire.
Mahomes now has taken the Chiefs to the big game four times, winning two of the first three. He soon might have three rings. And he’s only 28. Does anybody, anywhere, need reminding that Mahomes could have been a Bear? I think not. It is beyond shame, really. Delves into self-destruction.
Young Purdy looked cool and collected as he scrambled for yards that were key in the 49ers’ comeback victory against the Lions in the NFC Championship Game. Purdy, of course, was so available to any team, anywhere, in the 2022 draft that he was the last player selected. That earned him the title of Mr. Irrelevant. Almost like receiving a Titanic trophy, methinks.
At any rate, his success is dry kindling on the Bears’ failure pyre. The issue Purdy, 24, brings up is twofold. First, do the Bears have an eye for talent at all? Second, if a guy such as Purdy, who looks to be 18, actually came to the Bears to start his career, would the organization destroy him?
Mahomes was such a miss — the Bears traded up to take Mitch Trubisky instead of him in the 2017 draft — that the club might not recover from it in our lifetimes. You blow something like that, and it’s the same as saying years ago: ‘‘This Microsoft stock is pitiful. I’m selling mine!’’
The Bears are at a point now, with a middling team (as the NFL loves because of its parity-is-great philosophy), where they could change mightily. They have the first and ninth picks in the 2024 draft and could set themselves up for the future if they do things right.
But what is that?
That’s the discussion the members of our pool had. That’s the discussion all Bears fans are having.
Keep quarterback Justin Fields? Trade him and take Caleb Williams first and build a team around the kid?
Or — the main point — does it even matter what the Bears do because they will destroy what they get? Indeed, is a quarterback in a Bears jersey but a launched ship waiting to sink?
We left the bar pondering. And, as befits Bears fans, afraid.
