Transcript
Dan Bernstein (0:00)
Dan Bernstein, unfiltered unfiltered on 312. Sports DBU on 3. 1, 2. And we are brought to you in partnership with my bookie and also by our friends at Giordano's Pizza. The Bears saga is continuing, and I think we learned some things yesterday from what George McCaskey had to say. And it's not necessarily by his exact words. It's by what is not happening that tells us more, I think, than what is happening, especially when we are looking at the entire body of commentary that's coming from everybody involved. As we know, the governor's office, the governor has basically said as of last week, it's in the hands of the legislature. Essentially, the marching orders are there. It is clear what the governor's office wants and what they've been very clear about what they have told the Bears they would provide as far as infrastructure and all else but the pilot program, the mega project bill, to allow the Bears what they call tax certainty, which is a word that's doing a lot of work. It's not just certainty, it's certainty of lower taxes than they would otherwise pay, which is not uncommon for large projects. It isn't out of the realm of the ask for the Bears to have a reasonable expectation for budgeting what they're going to owe in taxes and being able to negotiate that with Arlington Heights, that is working its way through the legislature with the usual amount of Springfield horse trading being done at this point. And there has been the public perception of a stalemate of everything sort of being stalled out. When will the Bears decide? Here's this deal, here's that deal, and it's coming down to the wire. Well, these are Kevin Warren games, and he was able to coach up George McCaskey, and we're gonna hear from him in, you know, in his own words on forward progress coming up. But I do think it's important to realize when you pull back and you look at what's happening, the Bears have consistently moved the end line. There have been all of these soft deadlines of when shovels should be in the ground. And it's been 2025 and 2026. And then he's. Now Kevin Warren says, well, late spring, early is when we're going to know. Okay, well, what's interesting to me, the Hammond deal isn't changing. The Hammond deal's pretty much set outside of all of the uncertainties environmentally. And what else? What other shoes may drop there as far as the actual quality of the land. What is going to have to be done to prepare them for doing the work. They're still relatively far away when it comes to the stages they have to go through of actually breaking ground there in Arlington Heights. They could do that tomorrow. They have owned that land. There was a sports arena structure on that land. The infrastructure planning is all ready to be done. They haven't done that in Hammond. When it comes to transportation, when it comes to parking and a lot of this infrastructure stuff that, that would still need to be done, as well as figuring out the quality of the soil, where they are and what other environmental restrictions there might be. At the moment, they're saying they're good to go, but those things can all can bog down after you break ground, that there are things you might not even know until you're. You're underneath the soil and you say, oh, well, this is, you know, we've tested this and this isn't what we thought. And the fact that they haven't done anything yet, the fact that the deadlines keep moving and just happen to sync up with what the members of the Illinois Legislature have been saying about when they think that mega projects bill negotiation could conclude and when it would be ready for ratification, I don't think it's coincidence that the timing works out nicely. And we heard yesterday of George McCaskey talking up the. Oh, I, I think we could move the team to Hammond and nobody would care. And, you know, all this stuff that we've said regarding the Giants and the jets and teams that play outside of their. Their regular nominal home, I don't necessarily believe him 100%. I think Kevin's got him, like I say, ready to go on message, coached up to try to apply whatever pressure they feel they can, whatever leverage they feel they still have. They're trying to squeeze every last drop out of it at this point, but as long as they keep holding the door open for the Illinois and Arlington Heights process to work itself out, that tells you what, what their first choice is. And it makes it pretty clear they could say today, yeah, that's it. We're tired of waiting. We're going to Hammond. They're giving us everything. We get all these breaks, you'll get over it. We don't care. We're not worried about the legacy of being the team that took the Bears out of Illinois. I also think if J.B. pritzker and the governor's office were more concerned about that being real, he would be more involved at this point. I think the fact that he has removed himself and has some trusted proxies within the legislature moving the ball forward. That tells me that there is some confidence there. Because the last thing that J.B. pritzker wants if he's aspiring to higher office is the optics in a campaign ad of saying this man lost the Bears because of Illinois's onerous policies that drove the great Chicago Bears out of his state. He's completely aware of what that ad would look like and he has since said, you know what we've done, we can do. We continue to meet. He's got his people meeting with the Bears people. And then if you really look at what's being said, listen to Cam Buckner, who's extremely involved in this, that he's a representative who serves on important committees. Cam Buckner told NBC just a couple of days ago lawmakers are, quote, closer than people realize to reaching a deal. Here's the rest of his comment. We've been in constant conversation with the Bears. I think I had half a dozen conversations with them last week alone. We understand they want this done as quickly as possible and we respect that. I don't think any of the issues are insurmountable. They have to be dealt with directly because this is a statewide mega projects bill which will have statewide implications. And he said there's been questions about whether or not this can be used for places such as data centers and battery farms. So I think all those things are very cogent, very logical questions for people to ask ways we are trying to find solutions to all of them. Yeah, it's a big bill. But if the Bears were not in conversation with the Illinois Legislature, then there would be something else going on and the Bears would already have taken the Hammond deal.