Paranoid in Chicago

By: Dustin Beutin

“It’s not paranoia if everyone is really out to get you.”

- Woody Allen

Someone at the league office owes the Bears a fruit basket. Something nice, with a couple of those “Cutie” tangerines that are so much better than the bruised naval oranges you often receive. Heck, even a leftover Hillshire Farms sausage and cheese sampler pack from the holiday season would be a gesture of reconciliation: as long as it contained the little jar of hot mustard. Flowers would be nice, but in football, gestures of the floral nature are a bit out of place.

Except at a funeral.

Which is what the Bears’ season might just be as of today with the release of the 2008 NFL schedules. Don’t call it a conspiracy theory to look at the slate the league handed the Bears and cry “foul!” The Bears open with two straight road games, a brutal November world tour of three sequential road games and the final game of the season being played on the road as well. What does that mean in a league where the home team wins well over 55% of the time and a season can turn in the course of two games?

If you’re a Bear fan, it means you might as well forget about making reservations in advance for Super Bowl hotel rooms.

To call the Bears 2008 schedule unfair would be too kind, the kind of language best used in a kindergarten classroom. The only words that would appropriately convey the extent to which the Bears have been “pooch-punted” in the groin would be to spend some time in Joliet – as in prison.

The Bears won’t play at home until late September, which if history is a guide means Chicago fans will have to suffer from about mid August till the leaves change color to make it from the end of the Cubs and White Sox playoff hopes to the first home game at Soldier Field. The Bears will also finish the season on the road, which will only matter if they’re in the playoff hunt still – and most likely they won’t be after suffering through a month-long road trip. Hopefully the airline industry won’t need to cancel anymore flights by that time; but if the issue is money, the Bears will have a lot of frequent flier miles from their November road trip to bail out the airlines.

If it isn’t the Bears who petition the league for grievance, certainly it should be the fans. The Bears play three – count ‘em, THREE – home games in December, two of which are at night (Thurs vs. the Saints and Mon. vs. the Packers). Obviously Goodell has never sat in Soldier Field in December, when the snow blows UP into your face, the wind blows from EVERY direction and the only thing going DOWN is the temperature. Especially at night, when there is no sun to add what little warmth is possible while sitting next to a glacially formed body of water.

Perhaps someone in the league office – located in New York – is vastly confused as to the location of Chicago. Maybe they thought it was a sunny destination like Phoenix or Miami. It wouldn’t be surprising: some New Yorkers are lucky if they know the location of anything past Philadelphia, unless it’s Los Angeles (AKA New York, West)

Is it an over-reaction to call the Bears 2008 schedule a loaded gun? Yes, if there were a couple of other teams being short-changed by the schedule makers in the Big Apple. Unfortunately, the Bears are the only kid on April 15 to be handed the equivalent of coal in their stocking. Looking through the schedules of the other 31 teams in the league, it becomes obvious that either a Packer fan or some other hater of the blue and orange resides at NFL headquarters:

- No other NFL team in 2008 will open with consecutive road games.

- Only one other team in 2008 will open on the road AND close on the road after playing consecutive road games in September or December. (Panthers)

- No other team in 2008 plays three road games in a row.

- No other NFL team in an open-air dome north of the Mason-Dixon will play the majority of their home prime time games in December (the Bears play two of three)

Take all of this in context: the beloved darlings of the East coast - the Giants and Patriots - boast well balanced schedules, open at home within the first two weeks and don’t have to make a trek longer than two games in length. The Eagles, Redskins and Cowboys all have either an opener or final game of the season on the road, but none can complain of excessive, consecutive road games. You could go on and on with this list – the point is, with the possible exception of the Panthers, no team can really complain that the NFL didn’t show them at least a little love.

The Bears - on the other hand - have pretty much been handed a letter from the league saying, “Go f&*% yourselves” (New York accent optional).

The only ray of hope is how the Bears handled their last three game road-trip, which was in 2006 when they went Giants, Jets and Patriots in succession. They won two out of three and from there on out, never looked back on their road to Miami. But, this is not 2006 and these Bears are not the solidified team they were then. There are question marks at defensive coordinator, every position on offense, safety and somewhere along Urlacher’s supposedly degenerative back. This is a team in full-blown rebuild mode and somehow they have the unenviable task of playing a schedule that puts them at a disadvantage before the first snap of the season.

There isn’t much at this point that the Bears or anyone else can do about it except complain. And complain they should. To think that the league somehow has no control over the schedule or that they didn’t notice how one team would have such an unbalanced schedule is silly: after all, the NFL tells players how high their socks can be worn on the field and schedules the playoffs down to the kick-off time all the way in April. Someone out there knew that what they had done to the Bears was unfair – and didn’t care.

The least the NFL could do now is send a little fruit our way to ease the paranoia.

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Though other sportswriters in Chicago might still be unpacking their carpetbags, Dustin Beutin is a born and bred Chi-town sportswriter. Heading into the heart of the Big Ten (Purdue) broadened his sports views, and it was during the Jauron era that he lost the innocence of blind love for Chicago sports and began looking for an outlet to vent his frustration. A trip out west to USC for a Master’s in writing was only tolerable with high doses of ESPN and Dodgers games, though it gave him a respect for the national perspective. Now in the early stages of a sports-writing career, Dustin hopes to give back to the city of Chicago everything it gave him: opinions and heartburn.

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