Big news for Chicago Bears fans.
The concept of burying bad news tends to require an unfortunate event occurring prior to the bad news breaking.
This past Monday, Bears CEO Kevin Warren confirmed, in an open letter to Chicago Bears fans, that the team plans to leave central Chicago for Arlington Heights.
Warren’s aim is for this to be completed in time to bid to host the Super Bowl at the location in 2031.
This news was drowned out in a sea of Caleb Williams memes by Tuesday morning, with little reference to the stadium move remaining in Bears fan circles.
It was, of course, the best time to announce the news. Win or lose, there would have been something else to talk about come Tuesday.
Mixed emotions
Stadium moves will aways have positives and negatives for fans, as most of us know all too well as soccer fans in the UK. In fact, our two current NFL stadiums, Wembley and Tottenham, are new stadiums rebuilt from scratch on the same site as the original.
Although Soldier Field holds the title of the oldest current stadium in use in the NFL, that comes with an asterisk. The stadium was heavily renovated in 2002, to the tune of $632 million, of which $432 million was paid on the taxpayers dollar.
This was heavily criticised at the time by a portion of Chicago residents, and Warren has been keen to emphasise that the Arlington project will require “zero state money for construction”.
Even if the project was to be entirely privately funded, which seems fanciful, there would surely need to be public investment of some kind to fund transportation links.
That leads to the main concern for Bears fans – the location.
Where is Arlington Heights?
Arlington Heights is 25 miles away from Soldier Field, currently over one hour on public transport and outside of the city of Chicago.
Does a team stop representing the city it plays for, if it plays outside of the city?
Bears fans should perhaps take solace in the fact that the team will still play in the same state as the city it represents, with the New York Giants and Jets famously residing in a stadium in New Jersey.
For context though, their MetLife stadium is only five miles west of New York City. Warren was quick to state in his open letter that 50% of season ticket holders would be within a 25 mile radius of the new stadium site. That feels like a hell of a lot of loyal fans who will be more than 25 miles from their teams’ stadium.
Season ticket holders will be following the developments keenly, although their primary focus will be on the match against Detroit on Sunday night.
This will ironically take place in a domed stadium similar to the one Warren hopes to build.
As always, there is room for optimism. Bears fans can at least comfort themselves that they are in a better situation than football fans in Oakland, San Diego and St Louis, who have all seen their teams uprooted and moved cross country in the last 15 years.
It cannot get worse than that, can it?
