Yet another reason why this franchise needs new owners...
+1 Unfortunately I think we're stuck with them. They have sure taken a once-proud flagship NFL franchise, and run it into the ground. We keep saying we're not as bad as the Browns, but we're floating in the same toilet with them. Stinking.
A player gets injured in your employment and you want to find a way to save money at the expense of his being able to get the care he needs. I am embarrassed to be a Bears fan if this is the truth.
A player gets injured in your employment and you want to find a way to save money at the expense of his being able to get the care he needs. I am embarrassed to be a Bears fan if this is the truth.
Sweaty Teddy & George ran the numbers and found that they could save a few bucks this way. Who cares about crippled old players anyway?
A player gets injured in your employment and you want to find a way to save money at the expense of his being able to get the care he needs. I am embarrassed to be a Bears fan if this is the truth.
Sweaty Teddy & George ran the numbers and found that they could save a few bucks this way. Who cares about crippled old players anyway?
This is disgusting and every Bears fan should seriously consider making a statement and keeping Soldier Field empty on game days. How sick is the McCaskey family? I know George Halas was supposedly tight with money and I've read a couple books about Papa Bear and the history of the NFL, I just can't imagine him not wanting to strangle his family if he were alive. They are just so far removed from the game. Un-F-ing-believable. Disturbing on many levels.
All I can figure is that the "Family" wants to weasel out of paying workman's comp tax on their football employees. Maybe I'm misunderstanding this, but why else would they want to take away the right every other worker in Illinois has. It just sounds so petty for a multi-billion dollar team to pull something like this.
This is disgusting and every Bears fan should seriously consider making a statement and keeping Soldier Field empty on game days. How sick is the McCaskey family? I know George Halas was supposedly tight with money and I've read a couple books about Papa Bear and the history of the NFL, I just can't imagine him not wanting to strangle his family if he were alive. They are just so far removed from the game. Un-F-ing-believable. Disturbing on many levels.
I don't claim to know anything. But it certainly sounds like the current family members who have a financial cash-cow in the the Bears (the descendants of George Halas) just want to milk every penny out of the team. They probably don't even care about the franchise other than for its financial pipeline to their bank accounts. Other owners (like the Krafts or even crazy Jerry Jones) make money, but they also are passionate about winning. You can fault them for things, but I never question their hunger to win.
I've always felt like Virginia wanted to win a super bowl. But she's just an extremely elderly woman who is probably controlled 100% by her kids now. On paper she has a lot of power, but it is probably influenced by her kids now. Ted Philips is the CEO/President, and has been with the Bears since 1983 (about the time we lost Hall of Fame GM Jim Finks who built most of the 1985 Super Bowl team). Everything really started unraveling at that point. You could write a book about the franchise from that point on to now.
As long as the various family members are making money off the business, I don't think they feel any sense of urgency to replace Phillips or to bring a championship to Chicago. Words are cheap. I watch what people do. And the actions of the McCaskey family just don't line up with their rhetoric.
This is disgusting and every Bears fan should seriously consider making a statement and keeping Soldier Field empty on game days. How sick is the McCaskey family? I know George Halas was supposedly tight with money and I've read a couple books about Papa Bear and the history of the NFL, I just can't imagine him not wanting to strangle his family if he were alive. They are just so far removed from the game. Un-F-ing-believable. Disturbing on many levels.
I don't claim to know anything. But it certainly sounds like the current family members who have a financial cash-cow in the the Bears (the descendants of George Halas) just want to milk every penny out of the team. They probably don't even care about the franchise other than for its financial pipeline to their bank accounts. Other owners (like the Krafts or even crazy Jerry Jones) make money, but they also are passionate about winning. You can fault them for things, but I never question their hunger to win.
I've always felt like Virginia wanted to win a super bowl. But she's just an extremely elderly woman who is probably controlled 100% by her kids now. On paper she has a lot of power, but it is probably influenced by her kids now. Ted Philips is the CEO/President, and has been with the Bears since 1983 (about the time we lost Hall of Fame GM Jim Finks who built most of the 1985 Super Bowl team). Everything really started unraveling at that point. You could write a book about the franchise from that point on to now.
As long as the various family members are making money off the business, I don't think they feel any sense of urgency to replace Phillips or to bring a championship to Chicago. Words are cheap. I watch what people do. And the actions of the McCaskey family just don't line up with their rhetoric.
I am going by memory on this, based on the news coverage of the legal battle between the McCaskey's and the family of Mugs Halas over the ownership of the Bears in 1987.
The Bears are run by a family owned corporation. The details on the exact structure have always been kept secret. But assuming that the family members have some say in how the organization is run (like by voting their shares), then increased demands for taking cash out of the organization will have to be satisfied (or you get sacked by the board of directors). So it could very well be out of the hands of Virginia or George McCaskey at this point.
So it is a cluster frack. And will probably not get fixed as long as the ownership is in the McCaskey's hands.
Whow, whow, whow, whow!!! Lotta knee jerk reactions going on here. For one, how many of you live in Illinois? I know some of you do and unless you are living under a rock, this state is in a fargin mess and it has been for some time. For the first time in two years, we finally have both sides willing to come to the table and talk to pass a "Grand Bargain" starting Monday. Both sides are throwing ALL KINDS OF SHIT in to the mix at the last minute as bargaining chips to take out later. I will say that Illinois workers comp laws are currently among the most liberal in the country and it is driving business out of this state every day. How that effects the Bears and NFL players, I have no idea, nor do I care. I have to live here and this state is in dire straights, so how it impacts millionaires and Billionaire associated with professional sports, I couldn't care less.
The fact remains, that DeMaurice Smith is likely on the side of State Democrats and King Madigan, so this could easily be a red herring to add to the press pressure for their side. It wouldn't even surprise me if the McCaskeys weren't even involved. This is all Illinois politics.
Whow, whow, whow, whow!!! Lotta knee jerk reactions going on here. For one, how many of you live in Illinois? I know some of you do and unless you are living under a rock, this state is in a fargin mess and it has been for some time. For the first time in two years, we finally have both sides willing to come to the table and talk to pass a "Grand Bargain" starting Monday. Both sides are throwing ALL KINDS OF SHIT in to the mix at the last minute as bargaining chips to take out later. I will say that Illinois workers comp laws are currently among the most liberal in the country and it is driving business out of this state every day. How that effects the Bears and NFL players, I have no idea, nor do I care. I have to live here and this state is in dire straights, so how it impacts millionaires and Billionaire associated with professional sports, I couldn't care less.
The fact remains, that DeMaurice Smith is likely on the side of State Democrats and King Madigan, so this could easily be a red herring to add to the press pressure for their side. It wouldn't even surprise me if the McCaskeys weren't even involved. This is all Illinois politics.
I live in Illinois. I think there is a lot of blame to go around to both parties here. When they robbed the pension funds of Illinois workers it really pissed me off. I am on an Illinois pension. I worked my ass off for close to 30 years and paid into the pension fund every paycheck. But when the budgets got tight the lawmakers started dipping into these pension funds. They were no longer fully funded. Now 3 of them are pretty much broke. They stole that money from everyday people who busted their asses for many years. But the politicians didn't care. It wasn't their pensions. It didn't affect their families or their lives. It's the way they do these things in Illinois that really pisses me off.
I hope they do something with this "Grand Bargain" regarding the budget. But don't kid yourself. It won't be the fat cats suffering. It will be ordinary people. People like us who get the shaft. My taxes here keep going up. The services keep going down. The roads and infrastructure here are decaying. If you do need something from a government office now, you fight to get anything from understaffed offices and overworked people. It's not one party that let this all happen. Both parties are a part of this mess. I am not confident that the "Grand Bargain" is going to be that grand. But that's just me.
If the lawmakers had not taken the pension money and spent it elsewhere, then these pensions would be 100% fully funded today. There would be no crisis.
LINK PENSIONS 101: UNDERSTANDING ILLINOIS’ MASSIVE, GOVERNMENT-WORKER PENSION CRISIS
Employees do not own or control their own retirement funds under a pension system, nor do they have their own accounts. Instead, state officials and politicians control the pool of funds, allowing them to use workers’ retirement dollars as a political slush fund.
Another major weakness of DB plans is that if funds don’t have enough money to pay out future benefits, it’s taxpayers who must bail them out. That’s precisely what’s happening in Illinois today. Taxpayers now contribute more than three times what state workers contribute to their own retirements.
It is just a corrupt state. We have locked up a number of politicians over the years (not just governors) but they have the game set up so that it is legal to do a lot of this stuff they are doing. To me robbing money from a person's pension fund is theft. But in Illinois it is perfectly legal. It leaves the pension fund broke, and taxpayers have to try and bail it all out. How can that all be legal? If I didn't have close family here I would be leaving like a lot of the other people. If my kids would settle in another state maybe we will finally bail on this place.