Hanging up on me doesn't change the Bears' season

I called into the Score AM 670 at about 8:05 last night on my way home from a JVS event in Lakeview. The host had asked for callers to ask him questions about the Bears. I wanted to say, "Do you think the Bears have the ability to increase their win total to 10 or 11 games to make the playoffs in the 2010 season? It seemed to me they dropped a number of winnable games last year, and good teams win close games." Unfortunately I was never able to ask my question as I let it slip that I gave up on the Bears after their miserable loss in Atlanta (Week 6, which left them 3-2 after their bye week). At that point the host hung up on me.

Look, Bub, you can hang up on me for dissing the Bears and giving up on them so quickly. (And I turned out to be right; they missed the playoffs for the third straight season after their Super Bowl season of 2006.) But you can't change the fact that they were pretty mediocre last season. 7-9? 6-10? I don't remember, and it doesn't matter. The point is whether they can make the playoffs this season with a new offensive coordinator. Lovie Smith's job depends on it.

How long will Soldier Field last?

I watched the end of the Chicago Bears' thrilling overtime victory over Brett Favre and the Minnesota Vikings Dec. 28 from the comfort of my bedroom. I'm sure it would have been quite thrilling to have witnessed the game in person, but I really can't see sitting for four hours in a 20-degree night (plus wind chill) to watch a truly terrible football team. A friend and Bears expert told me the Bears still rank in the top ten (of 32 teams) in terms of stadium revenue. How long will that last? It seems to me that Mayor Richard M. Daley cheated the city by caving into the McCaskey family (Bears owners) demands for a renovated Soldier Field in 2001 after having told the McCaskeys "you can go to Alaska" for years. I'm no fan of public funding, but the total cost of the Soldier Field renovation was $632 million. At about the same time, Houston built Reliant Stadium from the ground up for $425 mil, and that stadium has a retractable roof! So Bears fans continue to pay top prices for tickets (no discounts after nearly three decades of consecutive sellouts and a huge waiting list) to freeze outdoors for nearly half the season. Retractable-roof technology has existed at least since 1989, when SkyDome opened in Toronto.

After another World Series was marred by bad weather in 2008, Sports Illustrated sharply criticized Major League Baseball for allowing numerous new ballparks to open without retractable roofs. Subsidies for the additional cost, which SI estimated at $100 mil each, could come from an MLB fund, the magazine said. I can't vouch for the magazine's math, but I agree that with baseball running from April to November (including the full postseason), keeping players and paying customers comfortable makes sense.* That would seem to be even more important for pro football, with much higher prices and much colder temperatures.

Chicago could have built a retractable-roof stadium, which could have attracted an annual college bowl game, Men's and Women's NCAA Final Four basketball tournaments, and one Super Bowl. (The NFL gives cities cold-weather climates one Super Bowl per stadium built. Keep in mind the Super Bowl is for rich men who play golf, which means Miami, Tampa, Phoenix and sometimes New Orleans. St. Louis is still waiting.) We have none of those tourism-generating events because we don't have a facility that can host them. And Bears fans continue to sit in the cold in a stadium quickly headed toward obsolescence.

Thanks again, Your Honor.

*Except in freezing Minneapolis, where the baseball team is moving from an indoor stadium to an outdoor ballpark. Good luck with April and May ticket sales, Twins.

Fanarchy takes on cheerleading

In an ad during an NHL Playoff game broadcast, the Versus cable channel promoted Anarchy, a new show premiering Sunday night, June 7 at 11ET, following the UFC MMA fight. It appears to be a news magazine-type show, and one of the issues to be discussed, according to the ad, is whether cheerleaders belong in sports.

I've been wondering the same thing.

All cheerleaders are not equal.

An article on the same subject in Sports Illustrated quoted Kristie Phillips, a star gymnast and one-time Olympic hopeful who flamed out after a battle with pill addiction. She became a cheerleader at LSU and wisely pointed out that cheerleading is one of just a few activities in which female athletes can perform in front of large crowds. So it does provide amateur female athletes, in high school and college, to perform in front of crowds during football and basketball timeouts.

Okay. So they do the pyramid and flip across the floor. But what about cheerleaders for professional sports teams? Why are they wearing often-hilarious leotards or bare-midriff outfits? Which demographic fan group are they appealing to?

I'm trying to figure that out. Most NBA and NFL season-ticket holders are men--specifically, married men. So are they the ones who are checking out the cheerleaders? I don't think female fans care one way or the other. Do these teams sell any additional tickets because they feature cheerleaders during timeouts? The Chicago Bears didn't think so. I don't know why they dropped the Honey Bears cheerleading squad years ago, but the Bears haven't had an unsold seat since 1982. Maybe the teams think cheerleaders add to the overall stadium experience (compared to tv), along with the spotlight introductions, the crowd participation rock songs, and the overpriced beer. But is their presence really appropriate?

Charity events. Professional teams will frequently mention how much community service work they do; apparently that justifies blackmailing the taxpayers into building them new stadia. Cheerleaders do perform a significant amount of goodwill visits on behalf of their teams. Yes, I'm sure hospital patients love being visited by beautiful women. But this type of outreach could also be done (and is done, to their credit) by the athletes themselves. I know (from a Bob Greene column in the Chicago Tribune, years ago) that Jerry Reinsdorf required his White Sox players to sign autographs. Are athletes required by contract to make community visits on behalf of the team, too? They should be. So much easier to schedule cheerleaders to do this work, of course. But maybe the teams would be better off without the cheerleaders.

A friend of mine who is a Johannesburg native thinks soccer is a very exciting game and urged me to try attending a match. Having concerns about driving to Bridgeview's Toyota Park to see the Chicago Fire, I drove instead to beautiful Hoffman Estates' Sears Centre to see the Chicago Storm. It's indoor soccer--a little different, more scoring, plus a scoring format similar to basketball with two points for a close shot and three points for a shot beyond an arc painted on the artificial turf. By a strong majority, I noticed most of the fans for Storm home games are either families with young children or kids' groups: Brownie Scouts, Girl Scouts, Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts, and boys' and girls' soccer teams. It's a family atmosphere. So naturally, the Storm features cheerleaders in spandex midriff-baring tops. They spend much of the game either in a bullpen near a goal or in the seating sections behind that goal. Like most cheerleaders/dancers, they perform two choreographed dance routines per game. Unlike most cheerleaders/dancers, they stand on the concourse post-game, handing out flyers for their dance clinic to pre-teen girls.

So a couple of points: If families and kids comprise a majority of a team's fan base, if the team has cheerleaders at all, they should be dressed for a kids' birthday party, not a nightclub. And those same women encouraging girls to attend a dance clinic seems a bit inappropriate as well.

A few years ago, the NHL started requiring teams to remove chipped ice from the frozen playing surface during tv timeouts--three times per period. The NHL didn't specify who should pick up a shovel, just that it be done. The Chicago Blackhawks jumped at the opportunity to hire beautiful women to clean the chipped ice, which they do while wearing midriff-baring tops. Of course they do. An article about the women in RedEye May 22 said they're available for events, and they attended a bar mitzvah. Unbelievable. I'll address that in another post. As part of their outreach, the Ice Crew, as the Blackhawks call them, attend Blackhawks-sponsored Bud Light Road Game viewing parties. During the season, these were held at Buffalo Wild Wings locations throughout the suburbs, and during the playoffs at sports bars on the North Side and in the suburbs. I don't have such a problem with that because most fans attending these events are over 21, and the Ice Crew ladies, notably, are modestly dressed. At the game, the focus should be on the game, without team-provided eye candy.

The Super Bowl and the frum community

There's a longstanding myth in the frum community that one group holds its annual event during the Super Bowl. For the past several years, I've looked in the frum bulletins, searching for advertisements for this mysterious event, held by a group that would have the chutzpah to compete with the Super Bowl. I never found it. I once mentioned my frustration with my fruitless search to a wise friend. "Oh, someone tried that once, and it was a disaster," she told me. "All the men were hanging out at the hotel bar, watching the game." I keep looking, and she's right--there are no frum events, meetings, fundraisers or dinners scheduled during the Super Bowl. Bears or no Bears.

An invitation to an upsherinish (hair-cutting ceremony for a three-year-old boy who has never had a haircut) arrived in my mailbox. I was all excited. I've attended a few upsherinishim but never actually been formally invited before. I was all excited because I truly like and admire the little boy's parents. Imagine my surprise when I saw the date and time: Feb. 1, 5pm CST. T-26 minutes to kickoff.

Damn.

If I didn't already have plans to watch the game, I could briefly say mazel tov and leave. That would be a bit rude. I do have plans, and I'm afraid I'll need to send my regrets. I feel bad. Did the parents check a calendar? Maybe they don't own a tv. That's fine. I know plenty of families like that. But even these families understand the Super Bowl is the biggest tv event of the year and that some no-tv families do visit friends to watch the game. In this couple's case, I suspect most of their invitees outside their immediate friend/family circle do own tv's and do plan to watch the game, if for no other reason than the party excuse.

I'll miss the food. I hope I can catch their second son's upsherinish, which should be in a year or so.

Bears 23, Jaguars 10 in the Soldier Field chill

Temperature at noon kickoff Sunday: 19. Wind chill: 9. Attendance: 61,736.
Just as I find the cold invigorating for just a few minutes, some Bears fans love sitting still watching Bears football for three to four hours in this weather. I don’t understand it, but to each his own. I overheard a discussion during kiddush Saturday morning. One person had attended the Nov. 23 Bears game in St. Louis, played indoors. He loved it. The other has season tickets in the family and spent $800 on winter gear for November and December games. They were both saying Soldier Field should have been domed when it was rebuilt in 2002. I would not want the taxpayers stuck paying the extra $100 million, but they’re right. There is no good reason to continue to play games outdoors in Chicago when it is so cold here, and the technology exists for a retractable dome. Fun to watch cold-weather games on tv—I love it—but a miserable experience in person IMHO, and those Bears tickets are expensive. I would much rather attend games in the domes in Detroit, St. Louis, Indianapolis or Minneapolis than attend a game in Soldier Field when the temperature at kickoff is below 50. The stadia in Chicago and Green Bay make the Bears and Packers look like cavemen.