As usual, we gathered in front of the television last Sunday for the Bears game, but our attitude toward the team was radically altered. This had happened through no fault of the players (though they would soon disillusion the fans in their own unique fashion). It would have been comforting to sink into the game in our usual manner, to obsess over the line play and defensive schemes, with the greatest philosophical issue being whether the Bears could still be considered the Bears if they played more like the late-70s San Diego Chargers than the mid-80s Monsters of the Midway. Yet in light of recent developments such issues–the playful if meaningless debates sport thrives on–seemed frivolous. Were the Bears still the Bears, if they played like the Chargers? Of course they were–if they played in Chicago. And if they didn’t, not only were they not the Bears, they weren’t worthy of consideration.
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The 1990s, it now appears, will be looked back on as the robber-baron era in major-league sports. The current controversy in football, with owners moving their teams to and fro in search of the best deal, or threatening moves to squeeze the best deal out of their current addresses, is simply the next chapter of the baseball strike, the tale now shifting to a different sport. Baseball players refused to give their owners what they demanded, and the result was a calamity that crippled the sport. Football players, whose relatively brief, faceless careers hinder the same bonding with the fans, gave in to the owners on almost everything in their most recent labor agreement. What has been the result? Owners are behaving like the Edward G. Robinson character in the movie Key Largo, who when asked what it is he wants says, “More,” and when asked if he has ever gotten enough responds, “Nope, never have.”
What’s most upsetting is the passive attitude most fans take toward these ownership demands. Well, they say, we better fork it over unless we want to lose the team. And sports owners are business executives, they argue; they’re just trying to get the best return on their investment.
No doubt at first this idea will be scoffed at, especially given the current trend toward reducing the size of government. And, people will argue, this is sport. With a utility or a rail system, one is dealing with services essential to citizens and businesses. Sport, however, is just sport. Yet just because sport isn’t essential to life (a notion we might well contest), team owners do not acquire the right to use practices that have long been illegal in other businesses. Big-league sports exist under a unique set of conditions, and there ought to be an overseeing body to make sure that those conditions are not manipulated to serve an owner’s greed.
That’s the Bears’ on-field problem in a nutshell. Coach Dave Wannstedt made the sound decision, during the off-season, to devote more time and money to offense than to defense. As a defensive specialist, he figured he had more ability to tinker with the defense on the fly during the season. What he didn’t foresee was the stagnation of Alonzo Spellman as a pass rusher (there, isn’t that the first mention of his name in several weeks?) and the lack of an adequate substitute for sheer ability. Blitzing schemes have left the Bears’ coverage barren, but the weak four-man pass rush has given opposing quarterbacks the time to pick apart even the Bears’ best pass defense. Quite simply, they’re damned if they do and damned if they don’t. By last Sunday, with all-pro cornerback Donnell Woolford already out and his replacement, James Burton, going down to injury, the Bears were asking for a day in which they’d be strafed for over 400 yards of opposing offense–much of it supplied by a backup quarterback, Don Majkowski, whose best days are behind him. Late in the game there is no substitute for a good pass rush, and without it all other strengths are meaningless.
