An open letter from President & CEO Kevin Warren regarding the Chicago Bears stadium project

Here's the real open letter if you haven't seen it.

Dear Chicago Bears Fans,

On Monday night of our home opener in September, the passion and pride was palpable and powerful (and perhaps parenthetically alliterative). An arbitrary 100 days later in order to make this seem like it was planned, those feelings are even stronger! For the first time since 2018, we've actually won more games than we've lost! I know, I was surprised that the Bears were allowed to do that too! As we approach a colossal home game against our hated rivals to the north this Saturday, I felt it was time to address our stadium project. TLDR: it's not going great!

You might be surprised to hear this, based on the years of promises of a world-class stadium befitting the grandeur and splendor of Chicago, but we kind of fumbled this one? Yeah, we had a plan set with Arlington Heights that no one was really that stoked about, but you, the Illinois taxpayer, didn't really want to chip in a few billion to help our tiny little franchise make ends meet. All we're asking for is some infrastructure aid and water and sewage costs and also an advantageous tax code to support our $9 billion dollar club! This is the part where we look at the Illinois state legislators and do our worst Vito Corleone impression: give us the bag or else we take the thousands of union jobs with us.

Take the jobs where, you ask? So, promise you won't get mad? And we TOTALLY SWEAR THIS ISN'T ABOUT LEVERAGE. You can tell that we're being honest by the all caps font and by explicitly using the phrase “not leverage” in an open letter to our fans. But we might think about moving over to Indiana? I've heard that Gary is quite lovely this time of year! Yes, we've been based in Chicago for over a century and are synonymous with it and the state of Illinois, but we're totally willing to move the goddamn Chicago Bear Down Bears across state lines to get a better tax rate. Think about it: we could be the Chicago Bears of Michigan City, Indiana! It rolls right off of the tongue!

And we of course do this for you, the supporters, the greatest fans in the world. Bears diehards have been willing to put up with generations of mediocre quarterbacks, decades of ineptitude, draft busts and free agency misses, embarrassing losses and double doinks. We think you're willing to bite the bullet for the team one more time in order to get a gleaming cathedral to football based just off of the Indiana sand dunes. It's worth it for the fans that we vacate our historic lakeside stadium with gorgeous views of the iconic Chicago skyline to jam as many expensive and fancy box seats for the millionaires as possible add more bathrooms or parking or something? I don't know, what do people who actually like football want at football games? I have no idea what real people want. I brought USC into the Big Ten, for goddsakes.

So we humbly say to you, Chicago and the wider fanbase: we're taking the Bears and the cannoli unless you leave that bag with the dollar signs at our door.

-Sincerely, and without an ounce of self-awareness,

Kevin Warren