Thanks, Bears, for keeping Chicagoans out of hibernation
Hey, Chicago sports fans, remember what games you were salivating over last year at this time? The Bulls and Blackhawks were bad, so maybe you kept busy watching college hoops and channel surfing between obscure foreign soccer matches on obscure cable channels. Maybe you just took another nap. Here’s what you weren’t doing in the early Januaries of 2012-18: getting revved up to watch the Chicago Bears in the playoffs. The team’s last postseason game was a loss to the Green Bay Packers on Jan. 23, 2011. Since then and until this season, there’s been a lot of football misery in Chicago and no playoff appearances. Zero. Nada. Bupkis — not to be confused with Butkus.
The spell is now broken. This Sunday, the Bears return to the playoffs! They face the Philadelphia Eagles at Soldier Field in a wild-card game. Kickoff is at 3:40 p.m. Put on your lucky socks, grill some brats, get to the tavern early. Bundle up if you’re going. Do whatever you do for a Bears playoff game — if you can remember back to the last one.
It feels so much better to have Chicago to root for on the path to the Super Bowl, doesn’t it? Especially in this holiday hangover week when you’re either girding yourselves to go back to work or school, or have been struggling to cover for vacationing colleagues.
New Year’s resolutions are energizing, but honestly, the first week of January is mostly a drag. Winter’s descended, summer feels as far off as NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft (4 billion miles) and you probably still need to take down your Christmas lights.
Thank goodness the Bears are good again. Not just good. This 12-4 team under new head coach Matt Nagy is superb in the traditional Monsters of the Midway sense: a hard-hitting, athletic defense balanced by a surprisingly entertaining offense. We’ll ignore the deficiencies of the kicker. We beseech the football gods to grant him confidence. Either that or please widen the distance between those pesky goalposts he keeps doinking.
Football is a great game and Chicago is a great NFL city. The Bears are cultural and geographic unifiers. They play south of the river on the lakefront and practice on the North Shore. The players are mostly millionaires, but the game emphasizes gritty determination and teamwork, which makes the Bears relatable in a town defined by its industrial roots.
Chicago is amped for this game. Here’s hoping for a victory Sunday because the alternative is too dreary to consider: Hibernation until spring.
Go Bears!