Crossing the (state) line

 Well, now they've gone and done it. Crossed the Rubicon, if you will -- or at least almost, kinda-sorta, pretty much something like it.

Yesterday, see, the  board of directors of the Chicago Bears voted for the first time on a new stadium site, and came out in favor of a proposed site on the other side of the state line. And so, welcome to the Chicago Bears of Hammond, everyone. 

Maybe. Kinda-sorta.

I say this because nothing's a done deal until someone touches a pen to the bottom line, and no one has yet done that in this Bears-to-Hammond deal. Until that happens, a vote by the board of directors and a bunch of happy talk from Bears president George McCaskey and CEO Kevin Warren is just play-acting to squeeze the Illinois lege and governor JB Pritzker.

In the meantime, though ...

Well. It does sound like the Bears are serious about this. I'll give 'em that.

"We believe a world-class stadium project in Hammond will transform the region, connecting Northwest Indiana and the South Side of Chicago though the Loop and across the neighborhoods and suburbs stretching north of the city," McCaskey and Warren said in a statement.

All that sounds great, except there's no stadium yet, and no surrounding village of bars and restaurants and high-end hotels, and no special parking next to the stadium for the muckety-mucks. Also no shuttle service for the unwashed masses in their Urlacher and Bobby Douglass jerseys who'll be parking in, I don't know, Munster or Griffith perhaps.

(For the low, low price of 30 bucks a head, no doubt.)

Anyway, with the Illinois lege gone until fall, and having again futzed away the spring session without moving on this, Indiana looks like it's won this. That it's done so because our own Guv, Mike Braun, promised the Bears everything but streets paved in taxpayer gold is just the way this sort of bidness gets done, disgusting as that is.

The Blob's position on this is if the Bears want a new stadium, the Bears should pay for it. They're an anchor franchise in the most lucrative sporting conglomerate in America, so it's not like they haven't got the money. Freeloading off the taxpayers for a development study after study has shown has limited long-term economic impact should be strictly verboten.

Yes, and pigs should be able to fly, do barrel-rolls and land at O'Hare on Sunday afternoons. Believe me, I get that.

So here comes Mike Braun with an armload of tax breaks and other incentives, and here are the Bears following established tradition -- i.e., he who fleeces Joe Taxpayer hardest gets the cheese. Lucrative sports franchises have been playing off one municipality against another since the Dodgers and Giants lit out for California 70 years ago. They call it leveraging; the rest of us just call it what it is, which is blackmail.

So there's plenty of precedent. And for those who think it's beyond weird that the Bears would abandon Chicago for some godforsaken patch of land in, ugh, Indiana ... well, New York lost the Jets and football Giants to a godforsaken patch land in New Jersey decades ago. 

The Commanders play in Maryland, not Washington. The 49ers play in Santa Clara, not San Francisco. And so on.

The Chicago Bears playing in Hammond, Indiana?

Oh, hell. Why not?