Wait, the Bears needed 8 kickers to try to find a replacement for Cody Parkey?

Over the weekend, the Bears narrowed the field of kickers auditioning to replace Cody Parkey from eight to two, and I, for one, was disappointed by the reduction.

In all my years as a sportswriter, I have never beheld eight kickers in one location at the same time. I’ve never even considered the possibility of such a thing. But now that I have, I imagine eight earnest, fresh-faced gents of modest proportions saying things to each other like, “Nice hip flexion!’’ and “No, I insist, use my tee!’’ I think of a high school Model United Nations Club or an internship program at Cracker Barrel’s corporate headquarters.

My loss for not being there.

As if to atone, the Bears traded for Raiders kicker Eddy Piñeiro on Monday, giving up a seventh-round pick two years from now if he’s on their roster for five games. So now they have three kickers.

You would think that after Parkey’s difficulties last season, it wouldn’t be hard to find a replacement. As any Bears fan can tell you through his or her tears, Parkey missed what would have been the winning field goal against the Eagles in a wild-card game last season, the ball clanging off an upright and the crossbar. He had an unnatural relationship with the goalposts during the regular season, too. It’s why the Bears sent him on his way at the first opportunity.

Over the weekend, a flash mob of kickers descended on Halas Hall for a rookie minicamp. Or, as I prefer to look at it, eight kickers walked into a crossbar, and it was a joke.

The Bears exposed each of them to pressure situations, or as much pressure as they could concoct. It’s impossible to replicate a packed NFL stadium and a game on the line. When Redford Jones was wide left on a 48-yard attempt Sunday, a group of players each had to do 25 up-downs as penance for his sin. A shamed Jones did not. The image of a kicker standing amid angry, grunting football players sounds like part of an anti-bullying campaign.

The Bears came away with no real answers from this three-day exercise, other than if you have eight kickers, you might not have one. They cut two who had been on the roster, including poor Mr. Jones, and apparently didn’t offer contracts to any of the four non-roster kickers. So the reality show is down to three contestants under contract — Chris Blewitt (no, really), Elliott Fry and Piñeiro, who spent last season on injured reserve for the Raiders.

It’s hard to believe it has come to this for the Bears, who have Super Bowl aspirations for 2019. My solution to the broader kicking problem is to ban all kickers and to leave football to the violent people. So far, no one has listened, though I’ll remain dedicated to the cause.

But if Parkey was so bad — and he was — surely there are seasoned candidates out there who would make fine replacements. Yet none of the eight kickers the Bears brought to their minicamp had kicked in an NFL game. Nor has Piñeiro. Are there no veterans worth looking at? Or is this a matter of the Bears not wanting to pay a veteran on top of the $3.5 million in guaranteed money they’ll owe Parkey this season? Did I just hear a “ding’’ after that last question? I thought so.

It’s hard to shake the sneaking suspicion that the Bears are hoping to luck into a young, reliable, low-budget kicker. If he falls short in the reliability category, they can always cut him, something they refused to do last season with Parkey and his big guaranteed cash.

That’s the working theory for how the Bears came to be where they were over the weekend, voting kickers off the island, off the stage and off the altar.

Over the years, NFL teams have drastically reduced media access, believing in all their military-like paranoia that the fewer prying eyes, the better. The Bears have been no exception. But they not only allowed reporters to watch the kicking competition at the minicamp, they wanted them there to add to the pressure on those going through auditions.

On Sunday, media members watched and charted 72 kicks in the competition alone. Over the three days of the camp, they probably witnessed 400 kicks, both in competition and in warmups. There hasn’t been much research done on the health effects of exposure to a high concentration of kicks. But post-traumatic stress disorder figures to be the bare minimum that those poor media types will be up against.

So maybe it was better that I wasn’t there. Maybe I’m making light of the spectacle of eight kickers, together in the same place at the same time, doing what kickers do. Maybe this sort of thing goes against natural law.

But I wish I had been there. There’s a decent chance the Bears would have asked me to start warming up my kicking leg. Or the other leg. They’re not picky.