By Steve Rhodes

Has the world gone mad?
The Cubs’ peculiar brand of failure has always been complicated, but Theo & Co., brought here to make the team winners, has doubled down on the notion that losing for this team is akin to winning – and the Kool-Aid is flowing like urine through Wrigleyville after a twi-night doubleheader.
The Tribune, which no longer owns the team and is now free to exercise bias it was previously forced to withhold, best exemplified the reaction to the team’s completion of an astonishing 101-loss campaign by proclaiming “Awful Season Aside, Cubs On Right Track.”
Yes, awful season aside, the Cubs are really going places!

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Posted on October 4, 2012

By Carl Mohrbacher

Former Bear Tommie Harris was arrested Monday for allegedly urinating outside of a Wrigleyville bar.
It was the first time Harris has produced a sack in Chicago since 2010.

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Posted on October 3, 2012

By Dan O’Shea

If you play in a fantasy football league that uses team defenses, picking up a good defense is usually the last thing on your mind during your preseason draft. Most team owners probably don’t even bother to study defense ranking, and simply go on reputations of defenses from the previous year.
However, as the Bears defense demonstrated in Week 4, your fantasy defense can contribute significant points. Five INTs, two TDs and a sack may be a once-a-season type of performance, but a huge number of fantasy league match-ups probably were won and lost late Monday night because of it.

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Posted on October 3, 2012

By Jim Coffman

The Bears’ pick-sixes won the game, and were great sequences for Charles Tillman and Lance Briggs, who have entertained with extreme competence around here for a long, long time.
The Cowboys’ pick-sixes lost the game, and were horrible sequences for Tony Romo and Dez Bryant.
And Tillman’s touchdown return when Bryant failed to make a simple sight adjustment was just one of several instances last night when ESPN’s Mike Tirico and especially Jon Gruden rightly focused on what the Cowboys did wrong rather than what the Bears did right in their comprehensive 34-18 victory.

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Posted on October 2, 2012

By Roger Wallenstein

Last weekend was my 50th high school reunion. If little else, it served as a plausible excuse to escape the sinking of the White Sox, 2012.
As with most of these celebrations, there is the common drill: gas cost 28 cents a gallon when we graduated; Kennedy faced the Cuban missile crisis; Marilyn Monroe was found dead; and James Meredith needed federal troops to protect him as he reported to English 101 at the University of Mississippi.
The White Sox opened the season six months ago, and the analogy goes like this: Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum still had White House aspirations, not too many folks had ever heard of Gabby Douglas, nor had Michael Phelps established himself as the most successful Olympian ever. Gas wasn’t cheap, but who could have anticipated a Chicago summer of five days breaking 100 degrees and another six weeks over 90.
Meanwhile, predictions dictated that the White Sox would lose 95 games.

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Posted on October 1, 2012

By Mike Luce

The Ball State Hoosieroons*, also known as the Cardinals, eked out a win over the the South Florida Bulls last Saturday thanks to a spectacular catch in the end zone by Willie Snead and suddenly, at 3-1, our friends from Indiana look like bowl contenders.
So, too, do our friends from Minnesota, who, under the tutelage of former Northern Illinois Huskie coach Jerry Kill, are 4-0 entering Big Ten play against Iowa on Saturday in the annual battle for the pig trophy known as the Floyd of Rosedale.

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Posted on September 28, 2012

By Emory Hunt

Keys for the Bears:
* For the defense: Keep Romo in the box, tackle-to-tackle.
* For the offense: As always, protect Cutler.

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Posted on September 28, 2012

By Carl Mohrbacher

Hearing James Laurinaitis’s name called by the Fox broadcast last week got me thinking.
No, not about the fact that he’s the son of the Road Warrior Animal or that his fifth favorite bible verse is (are?) Psalm 51 “all 19 verses.”
It got me thinking about other names that sound like serious health issues. As such, here are the top five ailments named after NFL players.

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Posted on September 27, 2012

By Dan O’Shea

If you were able to draft Aaron Rodgers or Tom Brady as your fantasy quarterback this year – or any year, really – you probably thought you were guaranteed fantasy success with at least one position.
However, for a variety of reasons, neither of these superstars has delivered a dominant performance through the first three weeks of the season – and let’s be clear, if a QB can’t deliver 20-point fantasy performances week in and week out, there is no reason to draft him in the first round.
Which QBs are doing better than Rodgers and Brady? Here’s a short, incomplete list:

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Posted on September 26, 2012

By Steve Rhodes

Please, no more Kerry Wood.
I mean, haven’t we appreciated him enough? In fact, I don’t think there’s a more overappreciated Cub in franchise history. And that includes Ron Santo.
At least if he acts as a roving minor league pitching instructor he wouldn’t be hanging around Wrigley.
But wouldn’t giving him that job just be a return to the Kubs Kulture that Theo is trying to break? I’m sure Wood has a few tidbits of advice to offer, but he never struck me – nor anyone else, as far as I know – as a student of the game.

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Posted on September 25, 2012