By Steve Rhodes
The Bears “unveiled” their Halas Hall upgrade last week to a wide-eyed and mouths-agape media all too happy to propagate the company line that the building is now a “game-changer.” All I could do was wonder, again, why our schools can’t get the same treatment. I could only come up with the same old answer: Capitalism is great for creating wealth, but awful for distributing it.
Now, I don’t begrudge the players their luxuries. But it would be interesting to do a little analytical study to see if there is any correlation at all between an NFL team’s facilities and their won-loss record. Assignment Desk, activate!
(For years, us Minnesotans were told, for example, that a new, taxpayer-funded ballpark would reap wins by the bucket. Instead, it has yielded the worst record in the majors.)
The best write-up on the “new” Halas Hall I saw, which also evoked schools, albeit in a very different way, came from the Chicago Architecture blog, which, purposely or not, put the abs in the absurd:
“The new HOK-designed building has more drama than a high school musical, with black carpets, brick walls, recessed linear lighting, and a black hallway lined with the illuminated numbers of retired Bears players arranged like markers on a gridiron.”
Nice.
“The lights come on as the players walk down the hall, accompanied by music, and arrive at a 46-foot video wall. There are about 175 video screens in the Halas Hall expansion. Your man cave weeps.”
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Posted on September 5, 2019
