The Chicago Bears are Dumb

Welcome back to the newsletter, folks. It’s been around 6 weeks since the last issue.

It was a weird January. We had to get our head straight.

We’re talking about the Chicago Bears this week, a place we generally try to avoid, since the sports ownership across this magnificent city is…frustrating at best.

Now, let’s be clear: The Bears are not going to Iowa, or Indiana. They’re gonna stay in Chicago.

But this is ultimately a publication that talks about leverage, and we’re addicted to finding out who has it, and who doesn’t.

The Bears’ Indiana Flirtation: Leverage With Paperwork.

For years, the Chicago Bears’ stadium saga has had the feel of a never-ending group chat argument: loud, circular, and oddly resistant to closure.

But the current “Bears to Indiana” thread is different in one important way. Indiana hasn’t merely expressed interest or tossed out a shiny rendering. It has started assembling the machinery that makes a relocation threat believable: an authority structure, identifiable revenue tools, and a political process that can move on a timetable.

That doesn’t mean the Bears are packing boxes for Hammond. It means the Bears now have a credible outside option. And that is something every franchise wants when it goes to the table with the city it occupies.

From Rumor to Legislation

The way you tell whether stadium talk is real is by looking for boring, unglamorous infrastructure: the legal entity that can sign deals, raise money, and pledge revenue.

That’s what Indiana lawmakers have moved toward with legislation tied to a proposed stadium framework in Northwest Indiana. The point isn’t that Indiana has promised a stadium tomorrow. The point is it has begun writing down, in legislative language, the kinds of revenue streams and governance mechanics that can support a stadium district. When you can describe how the thing gets financed and who controls it, you’ve crossed a threshold from speculation into plausibility.

The NFL also tends not to spend its most valuable currency—time and attention—on pure fantasy. Sports Business Journal’s reporting that Commissioner Roger Goodell toured potential sites, including in Northwest Indiana, is the kind of signal that doesn’t guarantee an outcome but does change how seriously everyone has to take the process.

Why Illinois Is Vulnerable Right Now

Leverage only works if the “home” deal still has problems. In this case, Illinois does.

The Bears’ Arlington Heights vision has been framed around a major public ask for enabling infrastructure—roads, utilities, transit-adjacent improvements, the stuff that makes a stadium district function. The number that has hung over the conversation is $855 million in public infrastructure funding, cited in national reporting and rooted in consultant-backed estimates.

That figure matters less as a moral argument than as a practical one. Once a project needs that level of public participation, the conversation moves out of the team’s control and into the messier world of state politics, local tax treatment, and public appetite for long-term commitments.

Every week that process drags, the Bears’ incentive to strengthen an alternative grows. And that’s what Indiana offers: a way to keep Illinois negotiating against a real clock instead of a theoretical one.

The “Certainty” Problem

Let’s get one thing straight: Stadium projects collapse because the spreadsheets won’t behave. Plain and simple. No other reason.

For the Bears, the sticking points in Illinois have repeatedly come down to questions of certainty:

• how a site gets assessed

• how taxes get treated

• how public support is structured

• and how those inputs hold up over time.

These aren’t headline-grabbing disputes, but they are exactly the type that can add years to a timeline or raise financing costs enough to make a project politically radioactive.

That’s part of why an Indiana framework matters even if it never becomes the final destination. If you’re the Bears, you don’t need Indiana to be perfect. You need it to be credible enough to make Illinois offer clarity.

Soldier Field: Feels like a Prison…?

Skeptics have a simple rebuttal: the Bears are locked into Soldier Field, so the Indiana storyline is mostly theater.

The lease is a real constraint, but “constraint” doesn’t mean “impossible.” Reporting has long pointed to a meaningful early exit cost—tens of millions, potentially approaching the high double digits depending on timing and structure. That’s serious money in normal life. It’s not necessarily deal-killing money in the context of a modern NFL stadium-and-district business case, where long-term premium seating, sponsorship inventory, naming rights, and year-round event potential can move franchise economics.

Just being clear here and making a distinction: This is a business problem, and it doesn’t necessarily eliminate an outside option.

Is it a Negotiation or a Road trip?

So are the Bears actually moving?

This isn’t the question, after all. Because it’s about a very typical sports team move. The Bears are running a very familiar play in a slightly updated stadium economy.

Indiana is the credible bidder that makes Illinois move. Illinois is the home market with the brand gravity, the fan base, and the emotional advantage—but also with political and fiscal friction. In the middle is the Bears’ front office, trying to convert public anxiety into better terms: more certainty, more speed, and a structure that protects the team from the usual risks that derail these projects.

No. The Bears aren’t moving, by the way. BUT BUT BUT…the “move” threat is basically a dial of power: you can either take the dial from ‘plausible’ to ‘probable’ to fit your timeline.

Why This Matters Even If the Bears Don’t Leave

The “significance” here is bigger than where the team ends up playing.

If Indiana can credibly position itself as an NFL stadium partner for a Chicago-area franchise—through legislation, authority structures, and earmarked revenue tools—then the old assumption that big-city teams have no real alternative starts to weaken. That has ripple effects. It changes negotiating behavior for other teams, other cities, and other states that have been watching stadium deals become costlier and politics become less forgiving.

In that sense, the Bears’ Indiana flirtation is a typical case study in how modern franchises negotiate: with governance, revenue streams, and just enough plausibility to make the other side blink first.