His personality was. And Emery didn’t exactly leave ’em laughing.

In a similar session 11 days earlier, emoting a few bars of a soulfully mellow Al Green tune was like a miracle cure for President Obama’s stiff image. But for Emery, levity wasn’t the best approach — running the Bears is more serious than running the free world. Besides, “soulful” and “mellow” probably don’t come up much in personality sketches of the team’s new boss of all things football.

Not that it matters around the Bears’ grim Lake Forest headquarters, and it shouldn’t. But it’s worth noting that since Mount Ditka finally went dormant as the ever-combustible face of the franchise in 1992, the Bears have employed Dave Wannstedt, Dick Jauron and Lovie Smith as their coaches and Rod Graves, Mark Hatley and Jerry Angelo as their talent wranglers.

Notice anything? All sane, measured, moderate men, not an exposed hot button among them. Also among them in that 20-year span was one Super Bowl appearance, offset by a lot of mediocrity.

Oh, Angelo could get riled when his methods were questioned or his moves second-guessed, but what followed was most often a Casey Stengel-style malapropism: the deposed general manager defended the “mythology” of the Bears’ due diligence in the Sam Hurd matter. He meant to say “methodology”; regardless, tortured syntax is a poor substitute for a roiling stream of angry invective.

The waters grew calm with Ditka’s departure. With Emery, the Bears were hiring to a type: a calm, careful consensus-builder with whom they felt comfortable, not a fiery agitator who would keep things edgy.

Some observers see an increasingly powerful hand of Lovie Smith in all this; the coach had a say in hiring the man who will function as his boss, and even before the search began, the Bears made it clear that Smith was being retained.

The declaration was interpreted — and criticized — as a harmful restriction of Emery’s power, but it was purely business: Smith is owed roughly $13 million for the two years remaining on his contract. The Bears are the McCaskey family business, and eating Smith’s contract is an expense they would rather not absorb, especially when they remain quite fond of him.

What matters is whether Emery is up to a job that involves more than finding players — he is setting the course for the entire franchise. It’s only fair to withhold judgment until he has spent some time doing that job, and just as fair to say he is in a tough situation.

He was not a “buzz hire,” like Theo Epstein, whose World Series résumé will buy another round of patience among the longest-suffering Cub fans. He doesn’t have the three-title credibility John Paxson brought to the Bulls’ front office, or the royal bloodlines of the Blackhawks’ Stan Bowman, whose father has more championship rings than fingers.

What Emery has is a reputation as a meticulous, industrious grinder who worked his way into this opportunity by hitting more often than he missed in an unpredictable business. But with a long-sought franchise quarterback on hand and coming into his own at age 28, restless Bears fans don’t want to hear about starting over. Put the right guy in charge and it’s 1985 all over again.

Angelo was ousted a year after a fourth division title and a trip to the N.F.C. championship game, the second-best showing of his 11-year tenure. And if the Bears had stolen the two or three wins they needed to secure a playoff berth after Jay Cutler broke his thumb, chances are Angelo would still be around.

But Caleb Hanie’s shortcomings as an N.F.L. quarterback exposed an alarming talent disparity between the Bears and their divisional rivals in Green Bay and Detroit. They masked it for a time with defense, special teams and Cutler’s inspired play last year, but delete the franchise quarterback from the picture and the Bears became the Buffalo Bills West.

Add aging, too. The Packers and Lions were not just better, but younger. Something had to be done.

Sam Hurd’s hiring no doubt hastened Angelo’s departure. The Bears are George Halas’s legacy, and Virginia McCaskey is George Halas’s daughter. She might not be running the team, but she is fiercely protective of Bears history and their rightful place in Chicago. Hurd’s arrest and the scope of his alleged involvement in the drug trade was an embarrassment, compounded by the revelation that he was under investigation in Texas when the Bears signed him.

Hurd was as complicit in Angelo’s dismissal as Hanie. Memo to Phil Emery: character matters as much as 40-yard-dash times in roster decisions.

Then again, Emery didn’t have to be reminded of that. His résumé includes a stop at the Naval Academy, where it matters more.

© DAN McGRATH for Chicago News Cooperative, 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Bears, Bears Front Office, Bears GM, Chicago Bears, Jerry Angelo, Lovie Smith, Phil Emery

“What have we here?” I wondered. Sports radio in my formative years meant Pat Sheridan on WMAQ or Red Mottlow on WCFL or the famed Musburger-Palmer Sports Report on WBBM. Easy listening.

This was most definitely not that.

The women in the car pleaded for music — they would have settled for my indescribably bad singing in their desperation — but I was fascinated and wouldn’t budge. This was either a dead-on impersonation of “The Super Fans” segment on NBC’s “Saturday Night Live,” or the inspiration for it.

Nope, neither. It was Mike North being Mike North — loud, opinionated, occasionally crude, undeniably passionate. If he truly spoke for the city, you had to wonder what that said about Chicago, but he was barreling toward becoming its most dominant sports voice, airwaves division.

The print title belonged to Jay Mariotti, a chronically dyspeptic, quick-to-anger columnist for The Chicago Sun-Times. Things are a lot quieter around here since both screamers moved beyond earshot.

WSCR has soldiered on nicely without North; it is celebrating 20 years on the air, which is commendable endurance in the fickle-format radio world. And with the old newspaper warhorses Mike Mulligan and Brian Hanley filling North’s former slot, morning-drive ratings have never been higher, according to Mitch Rosen, the station manager.

Chicago, red-hot sports town that it is, now has two stations devoted full time to sports and sports chatter, but the concept was hardly a sure thing when WSCR began in 1992.

Staying power isn’t the only justification for all the self-congratulation accompanying WSCR programming these days. Although rival ESPN 1000 has the abundant resources and marketing muscle of the Worldwide Leader at its disposal, WSCR holds a decided ratings edge in sports radio’s most coveted demographic: males age 18 to 54 with strong opinions, access to a telephone and time on their hands.

It got there by playing to Chicago’s provincialism. WSCR bills itself as the home of hyperlocal sports talk — think all Bears, all the time — while ESPN must accommodate a more national constituency.

The Score also made a wise move in aligning itself with newspaper people, early on and up to now. Name recognition aside, they’re trained reporters with good insights, and they know how to cover a story.

The print influence is not as strong at ESPN, even though the mother ship has always gone heavy on former newspaper scribes. The work of crossover pioneers like Peter Gammons and John Clayton, as well as Buster Olney and Rachel Nichols from the current roster, provided instant and lasting credibility for the network’s newsgathering.

I’m merely a male with a telephone, too old and too busy to be of much demographic value to either station. And hopelessly out of touch, I guess — I thought Tony Kornheiser was doing the best show in town when ESPN carried him a few years back, only to drop him because he wasn’t “Chicago enough” to last here.

Scott Van Pelt is?

Still, I’m a fairly regular listener, mainly because I’m in the car more than I was in my newspaper days. Then it was more of a duty — what fans were thinking mattered some. Now it’s a choice, although some of the ads don’t flatter one’s male identity.

I enjoy Mully and Hanley’s easy banter and value their newspaper sensibilities, but morning drive is a time-share: I get a better sense of what went on in the world overnight from “Mike & Mike” on ESPN. I appreciate Matt Spiegel as a calming influence on the bombastic Dan McNeil. Barry Rozner is the best of the fill-in hosts, and the afternoon producer Jason Goff will do well on the air once the station finds a slot for him.

The Score also gets good mileage from its contributors; Matt Bowen and Hub Arkush offset Mike Ditka’s celebrity with real football knowledge, and no one can touch Steve Stone as the last word on Chicago baseball.

How much influence the stations wield is hard to quantify, though I suspect it’s not as much as they’d like to believe — a good ratings number equates to about 200,000 listeners in a market of more than seven million people.

The newspapers pay attention. Though we wasted many man-hours running down radio-ignited rumors when I worked at The Tribune, we occasionally heard something that went somewhere.

Among newsmakers it varies. Andy MacPhail insisted he never listened when he ran the Cubs and scoffed at those who did. Dusty Baker heard enough to decide the city had turned on him. Ozzie Guillen (and his family) not only listened, he occasionally called in to tell his side, once before a Cubs game when he must have had better things to do.

Then again, Ozzie fit that coveted demographic.

© DAN McGRATH for Chicago News Cooperative, 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Brian Hanley, Chicago Sports Radio, ESPN Radio, Jay Mariotti, Mike Mulligan, Mike North, Mitch Rosen, Sports Radio, The Score Chicago, WSCR

If he played basketball, he would probably be the 5-foot-4 former N.B.A. dynamo Muggsy Bogues.

Football? The dangerous, diminutive running back Darren Sproles comes to mind.

Shaw is a hockey player. He’s 20 years old and nine games into his National Hockey League career, so it is a little early to bestow greatness on him, to acknowledge him as anything more than a determined worker bee who compensates for a conspicuous lack of size with effort, toughness and smarts, in the manner of Eckstein and his fellow mini-stars.

But with five goals in those nine games, Shaw has made an undeniable impact on the Blackhawks, even as he reminds you of your little brother’s ever-mischievous best buddy. Meanwhile, his fearless style and relentless energy have made him a United Center favorite as an irritant to Hawks opponents, perhaps because he looks (and plays) like that impish, ever-mischievous little buddy.

“I wasn’t sure who that Shaw kid was, but he had a tremendous game,” San Jose Coach Todd McLellan said after Shaw produced the eventual game-winning goal in the Hawks’ 4-3 victory over the Sharks last week.

He followed with a goal and an assist and had a spectacular scoring play disallowed by a referee’s call in a 6-2 thumping of Buffalo three nights later, reiterating the point that there’s more to Shaw’s game than manic energy.

“He’s pretty remarkable,” said Hawks Coach Joel Quenneville. “He gives us offense and energy, but his instincts in all aspects of the game are top line. He competes. He just keeps going. You have to admire that.”

Shaw’s actual size is a matter of conjecture. The 5-foot-10, 180-pound listing in the team’s program seems a generous appraisal: 5-8 and 170 is probably more accurate.

“All my life, I’ve heard that hockey is a game for bigger guys,” Shaw said with a hint of an edge to his voice. “It just made me play harder. I like proving people wrong.”

The yin to Shaw’s yang within the Blackhawks’ youth movement is 22-year-old Jimmy Hayes, a 6-foot-6, 220-pound bruiser from Boston College with skills to match his muscle. Hayes had four goals in his first 10 N.H.L. games.

Becoming younger was not really an imperative for a team whose star-studded nucleus is barely of legal drinking age; Patrick Kane is 22, Jonathan Toews is 23, and Corey Crawford is 25. But it is indicative of the Hawks’ ability to reload on the fly after so much of the depth from their 2010 Stanley Cup championship team was lost to salary-cap miscalculations.

After squeaking into the playoffs last season and losing to Vancouver in a seven-game first-round series, they held first place in the Central Division as this season opened and surged into the conference points lead last week with five wins in six games. All that was despite losing 20-goal-scorer Patrick Sharp (wrist) and the fiery instigator Daniel Carcillo (knee) to injuries.

Hayes figured to be here sooner or later; he was a second-round draft choice of the Toronto Maple Leafs whom the Hawks acquired via trade in August 2010.

Shaw carried no such expectations. He went unclaimed in the first two years he was eligible for the N.H.L. entry draft, his size clearly a factor. He was picked in the fifth round last year after being voted the hardest-working player in the Ontario Hockey League while toiling for Owen Sound.

“Nobody talked to me, nobody rated me those first two years, so I didn’t pay any attention to the draft,” Shaw recalled. Last year, he said, he thought he might be a sixth-round choice, “so when my name was called in the fifth round, it was pretty exciting.”

Growing up with two similarly rambunctious brothers in Belleville, Ontario, Shaw patterned his play after Wendell Clark, a modest-size forward who distinguished himself as a goal-scorer, playmaker and fighter over 15 N.H.L. seasons, 10 of them with the Maple Leafs.

“He wasn’t big — 5-11, 190 — but he competed every period, every shift, and he wasn’t scared of anything,” Shaw said. “I idolized Wendell Clark.”

Shaw began the season with the Rockford Icehogs of the American Hockey League and got the call to Chicago after Carcillo’s season-ending knee injury. He tangled with Philadelphia tough guy Zac Rinaldo, an antagonist from their junior days, in the first period of his first N.H.L. game. In the second period he scored his first N.H.L. goal, and he has been a hard-to-ignore presence ever since.

“That guy is something,” said Crawford, his teammate. “It’s not just the goals, it’s the opportunities he creates by going so hard all the time. He never stops. He has to play like that or he’d get killed out there.”

Self-preservation aside, Shaw’s motivation is simple. He wants to remain right where he is, and nothing against Rockford.

”I don’t want to get sent down,” Shaw said. “If you’re a hockey player, the N.H.L. is where you want to be. I’ve got some confidence, but I can’t get too comfortable. I’ve got to keep contributing and prove I belong here. I’ve always played every game like it might be my last, and that’s not going to change.”

© DAN McGRATH for Chicago News Cooperative, 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Andrew Shaw, Blackhawks, Jimmy Hayes, Joel Quenneville, NHL

Derrick Rose is playing too many minutes and is certain to wear down with so many games compressed into a tight schedule, a consequence of time lost to the N.B.A. lockout.

There is no reliable second scorer after Rose, and don’t even suggest that land-based plodder Carlos Boozer.

Despite coach Tom Thibodeau’s insistence on lock-down defensive diligence, his team is capable of some inexplicable walkabouts, including one last week in Atlanta, where the mad-bomber Hawks hit 56 percent of their mostly uncontested shots while drilling the Bulls by 16.

And that butt-waving, belly-thumping, proudly obese Matadors dance troupe that entertains at the United Center is just gross.

With all those flaws, — real, imagined or somewhere in between — you’d suspect the Bulls were off to a 2-10 start, which they were the last time there was an N.B.A. a lockout, in 1999, when the immortal Kornel David and the incomparable Rusty LaRue found their way onto the a post-MJ roster.

Relax. This year’s Bulls were 11-2 after winning in Boston Friday night. Thibodeau is too persnickety a coach to sing their praises, but he’s O.K. with where they are, even as a seven-games-in-nine-nights grind, brought on by that lockout, all but did away with his precious practice time.“I like our approach,” Thibodeau said. “We’re pretty good about facing what’s in front of us and concentrating on doing the things we need to do to improve.”

Because teams had so little time to prepare, the regular season will be less reliable as a playoff predictor than it typically is. Rosters will be in flux right up to the March 15 trading deadline as coaches seek depth and versatility.

That works to the Bulls’ advantage because they’re already set. Keith Bogans is the only significant piece missing from a team that made the Eastern Conference finals last year, and his significance is easily overstated: Bogans started all 82 games, but played less than 18 minutes and averaged 4.4 points. Replacing Bogans at shooting guard is Rip Hamilton, with a 17-points-per-game career average, the only newcomer to be worked in.

Under Thibodeau, the Bulls have an established style of play, one that produced a league-high 62 wins last season. With so little turnover and such limited practice time, they can work on refining that style, tweaking it for each opponent rather than overhauling it to accommodate new faces. Holdovers Ronnie Brewer, Omer Asik and even John Lucas III seem ready for bigger roles.

“We’ve got a lot of versatility on our roster,” Thibodeau said, though he may want to remind his unorthodox center Joakim Noah that the lockout is over.

There is grumbling that at least one more new face — maybe an opportunistic spot-up shooter for Rose to find when his drives bring defenses swarming — would be useful, especially with Miami improving its depth by adding both a versatile veteran (Shane Battier) and a dynamic rookie (Norris Cole).

Then Kyle Korver goes 8-for-10 on three-pointers in no-sweat wins at Orlando and Minnesota, and Thibodeau’s poker-faced defense of his roster (“I’ll play these”) is suddenly more plausible. “The three is a big part of what we do,” he said.

Korver was hitting 51 percent of his three-pointers through 13 games, up from 41 percent last season.

The N.B.A.’s opening three weeks suggested a league in flux, with the Lakers’ and Mavericks’ early struggles portending a shift in the balance of power. If there’s a breakthrough team capable of matching the 21-win improvement the Bulls managed last year, it would be the Clippers. But they’re toting a lot of bad history, and their coach is Vinny Del Negro.

In the East, Miami looked to be as good as advertised, but if Dwyane Wade’s sore foot becomes chronic trouble, the Heat’s Big Three is reduced to maybe two and a half. Age appears to be catching up with the Celtics, and the heart ailment that threatens 25-year-old Jeff Green’s career makes the trade that cost them imposing big man Kendrick Perkins even more dubious. Speculation over Dwight Howard’s next home is as distracting to Orlando as disastrous win-now trades for Gilbert Arenas and Jason Richardson were last year.

And Bulls fans are cranky over Carlos Boozer’s mobility?

This just in: The Bulls will go as far as Derrick Rose takes them. As the great ones do, he has added another wrinkle to his game — soft floaters and in-the-lane runners that should spare him some of the abuse he takes on his kamikaze drives to the basket. It’s a stretch to call Rose the best player in a league where Kobe Bryant and LeBron James still lace ’em up, but he’s in the team picture.

“There’s a reason he’s the M.V.P. of the league,” Pistons Coach Lawrence Frank said. “I liken him to Jason Kidd, not so much because he’s a quick, strong, smart point guard, but because he elevates the play of everyone around him. And he’s always the same, whether the Bulls are up by 20 or down by 20, which they rarely are.

“I don’t know how much better he can get,” Frank added. “Since he’s in our division, I hope it’s not too much.”

© DAN McGRATH for Chicago News Cooperative, 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Bulls, Carlos Boozer, Derrick Rose, Keith Bogans, Lawrence Frank, Miami Heat, Tom Thibodeau

Smith bristled at an observation that the Bears’ absence from the current postseason left them a non-playoff team in four of the last five seasons. “One in the last two seasons is how I look at it,” he said, conveniently overlooking a three-year dry spell that followed their loss to the Indianapolis Colts in Super Bowl XLI after the 2007 season.

Bears management evidently didn’t share Smith’s sunny take on things, but isn’t holding him responsible. On Tuesday, Smith’s boss was fingered as the fall guy accountable for the 2011 collapse. Jerry Angelo was fired as the Bears’ general manager after 11 years and four division titles, plus that one unavailing Super Bowl trip.

In a less surprising move, lightning-rod offensive coordinator Mike Martz also left the team after two years of trying to jam square-peg players into his round-hole system. Smith announced Martz’s departure, along with that of quarterbacks coach Shane Day, citing “philosophical differences.”

Martz was in the final year of his contract, and his future had been a topic for debate all season. He was viewed as a goner after Smith offered only a tepid endorsement of his hand-picked hire during Monday’s media session.

Bears President Ted Phillips hired Angelo after a league-wide search in 2001. They were friends as well as co-workers, and Phillips said it was a difficult decision to fire him. Phillips praised Angelo’s character and work ethic, but acknowledged a growing talent disparity between the Bears and the defending Super Bowl champion Green Bay Packers, whose 15-1 regular-season record was seven games better than the Bears’ 8-8 mark.

Likewise, NFC North rival Detroit (10-6) has assembled a promising young roster and vaulted past the Bears and into the playoffs, three years after enduring a winless season.

George McCaskey, in his first year as Bears chairman, said McCaskey family ownership endorsed Phillips’ decision to replace Angelo. Chances are his mother had a say in the move as well; Virginia McCaskey is 89, but she takes her role as custodian of the Bears’ legacy very seriously.

Angelo has a contract through 2013, as does Smith. Phillips said Smith will be involved in the search for a new GM, which will begin “immediately.”

Speculation swirled toward Indianapolis, where Bill Polian was let go on Monday after 11 playoff appearances in 14 years running the Colts. Polian also put together the Buffalo Bills’ four Super Bowl teams and built the Carolina Panthers into an NFC Championship game participant in their third year of existence.

At 69, Polian is a little old for the day-to-day grind of overseeing an NFL operation, but his track record as a talent evaluator is Hall of Fame-caliber.

Personnel decisions—evaluation, acquisition and retention, by whatever means necessary—are a general manager’s No. 1 responsibility in the modern-day NFL. Angelo could point to some success in the free-agent market (Julius Peppers) and on the trade front (Jay Cutler), but his record in the college draft was borderline abysmal, and the draft is the lifeblood of consistently good NFL teams.

He devoted several high-round picks to offensive linemen and wide receivers, and both areas have remained problematic in the Angelo era. Of his first-round picks, only defensive tackle Tommie Harris was a Pro Bowl-caliber performer, and chronic knee injuries reduced Harris to a spot player over his last three years with the Bears.

Running back Matt Forte was selected for the Pro Bowl this year, the first and only Angelo-drafted offensive player to achieve that honor as a Bear.

Guard Chris Williams and tackle Gabe Carimi are the only first-round picks still on the roster. Both were lost to injury this season, so their capabilities as offensive linemen for the long term remain in question.

Earl Bennett, a draft pick, is the team’s most reliable receiver, at least when former Vanderbilt teammate Cutler is on the field, but fellow receivers Mark Bradley and Juaquin Iglesias were wasted picks who simply didn’t contribute.

Off last year’s showing, the Bears were considered a playoff contender when the season got under way, but a series of injuries revealed a glaring lack of roster depth for which Angelo is responsible.

Despite four years in the Bears’ system, Caleb Hanie proved hopeless as a replacement for Cutler, losing all four starts upon taking over at quarterback after Cutler broke his thumb in a win over San Diego that boosted the Bears to 7-3.

Josh McCown, pulled off the high school field in North Carolina where he was coaching, got the Bears a split of their final two games after replacing Hanie, but a five-game slide knocked the team from playoff contention.

Forte injured his knee against Kansas City a week after Cutler was hurt, and backup Marion Barber cost the Bears two possible victories with turnovers and poor decisions. The offensive line—a patchwork project all season—wore down as the season wore on and afforded Hanie inadequate protection. Cutler’s maneuverability and quick reactions in the pocket, which the tentative Hanie couldn’t replicate, made the line look better than it was.

The Sam Hurd scandal may be the most damning indictment of Angelo’s tenure, at least in the image-conscious eyes of the McCaskey family.

Hurd, a backup wide receiver, is facing federal drug charges and was described as major dealer when he was arrested outside a suburban Chicago restaurant last month after buying a kilo of cocaine from an undercover agent. The former Dallas Cowboy was already under investigation for drug trafficking in the Dallas area last summer, but that information apparently escaped Angelo, who signed Hurd to a four-year contract.

The Bears have been more tolerant of on-field ineptitude than they have off-field malfeasance as long as Virginia McCaskey has been involved with the team. She is the daughter of George Halas, founder not only of the Bears but of modern-day pro football. Any transgression that reflects poorly on either institution does not please her.

At 89, Mrs. McCaskey prefers to remain in the background, as she always has. But Tuesday’s developments may be an indication that she has spoken.

© DAN McGRATH for Chicago News Cooperative, 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Bears Front Office, Bears GM, Bill Polian, Chicago Bears, Jerry Angelo, Jerry Angelo Fired, Lovie Smith, Mike Martz, Sam Hurd, Virginia McCaskey

Mark Buehrle’s departure for Miami is one reason to be grumpy. Buehrle, the cheerful, ultraprofessional left-hander, was one of my favorite Chicago athletes. He was almost a perfect fit with the White Sox too, but his departure reminds us that nothing is forever in sports.

What is sad is that Buehrle’s last Chicago season will be remembered as a dispiriting failure by a team that was built to win, but was instead sidetracked by petty squabbling between manager Ozzie Guillen and the front office. General manager Kenny Williams survived, and it looks as if the team he assembled will get another chance.

We will know soon enough if the former skipper was the problem. Buehrle obviously did not think so.

It would be foolish and wrong to lay all the blame for the Cubs’ 2011 failings on the deposed manager, Mike Quade, but general manager Jim Hendry’s belief that Quade, an earnest, well-meaning baseball lifer, was a good fit for the job probably doomed Hendry with the Ricketts family, the owners.

Only those who wanted Ryne Sandberg to manage the Cubs objected to Quade’s hiring. I had misgivings the first time I heard him mention Cassie and realized Quade was referring to shortstop Starlin Castro and not the second Mrs. Joe Montana.

Big league managers don’t talk like that.

Hendry is a good man, and his nine-year tenure as general manager had its moments. But in going big-time to replace him — Theo Epstein? the Cubs? — Tom Ricketts made an undeniably shrewd move. He restored hope. It’s the currency of the sports culture in Chicago.

And it disappeared at Soldier Field about three series into Caleb Hanie’s second start as Jay Cutler’s replacement as the Bears quarterback.

With Cutler, the Bears had the sharp look of a playoff team. Without him — and without Matt Forte, Johnny Knox and a couple of starting offensive linemen — they’re almost unwatchable.

Now the blame game is under way in earnest: Jerry Angelo, Mike Martz and Lovie Smith must pay for this failing, preferably in that order. In the court of talk-radio opinion, a wholesale housecleaning is mandatory, one year after the Bears played for the N.F.C. championship.

Upon further review, they probably weren’t as good as they looked last season, when remarkably good health and some lucky scheduling breaks eased their way, or as bad as they’ve looked in the last month, as Cutler’s absence underscored his stature as a franchise quarterback.

Hanie? Uh, no. The reaction is rather personal among those of us who believed he had enough talent and moxie to salvage a playoff appearance; sports scribes don’t like to admit it when they’re wrong. But it happens.

At the 1986 Final Four in Dallas- — Louisville over Duke in the title game — I remember feeling bad for Mike Krzyzewski as the jubilant Cardinals cut down the nets.

I had quietly been pulling for Krzyzewski as a fellow Chicago guy, and he had groomed this Johnny Dawkins-Mark Alarie-Jay Bilas group for big things since they were freshmen.

Now the three would be moving on, and I wondered if Krzyzewski had missed his one shot at glory, given Duke’s lofty academic standards and the relentlessly competitive Atlantic Coast Conference. Four national championships, 11 Final Fours and an Olympic gold medal later, Coach K is the undisputed king of college basketball, at least. In November, as he was about to surpass Bob Knight’s record for career victories, ESPN’s fawning coverage would have you believe he cured cancer at halftime of the 2010 Carolina game and brokered Middle East peace during a TV timeout.

He is coaching basketball. There are high school guys who do that and also teach history, sweep out the gym and wash uniforms. And they don’t make $4 million a year.

Myth-making in sports is as old as the games themselves, but the practice seemed to reach new heights (or depths) in 2011, with alarming consequences. It is fair to ask if some of what Jerry Sandusky is supposed to have done could have been prevented if preserving the Legend of Joe Pa hadn’t been such an unquestioned imperative at Penn State.

Derrick Rose is 62 years younger than Joe Paterno, but his canonization process has begun. Rose, the Bulls’ fourth-year point guard is a great basketball player and a great story, a product of Chicago’s downtrodden Englewood neighborhood, imbued with the will and the drive to escape the mean streets that have claimed too many other promising young men.

He is also a decent, grounded guy whose humility and gratitude came through at a recent news conference announcing a five-year, $94 million contract extension that should provide nicely for generations of Roses.

But that’s not enough. We want Rose to transform Englewood, eradicate poverty, unemployment and gangs, turn it into a model community of Derrick Rose-caliber citizens.

That’s a lot to ask of a 23-year-old who spent one year in college.

Rose is a kid, a kid who happens to be an amazing basketball player, to the delight of his hometown. A good kid, too. Let’s say that’s enough for 2012. He’ll get the rest of it.

© DAN McGRATH for Chicago News Cooperative, 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Derrick Rose, Jay Cutler, Jim Hendry, Mark Buehrle, Mike Quade

Forgive Bears fans, then, if they started to believe anything was possible on Christmas after Rose and the Bulls pulled out a last-second victory over Kobe-Bryant and Co. in their lockout-delayed season opener at L.A.’s Staples Center.

Well, no. Not this year. Although Josh McCown played quarterback with where-have-you-been all-month aplomb in his first Bears start and third-stringer Kahlil Bell ran for a career-high 121 yards, the Packers had Aaron Rodgers. Too much Aaron Rodgers.

The NFL’s MVP-in-waiting was the difference in Green Bay’s 35-21 victory at Lambeau Field Sunday night, throwing five touchdown passes as the Packers (14-1) officially eliminated the Bears (7-8) from playoff contention. At five losses and counting, the Bears are stuck in the longest losing streak of coach Lovie Smith’s eight-season tenure.

The road to the Super Bowl will pass through Green Bay as the defending NFL champions secured a first-round bye and home-field advantage throughout the NFC playoffs.

Rodgers was 8-for-8 for 77 yards and hit Jermichael Finley with a three-yard touchdown pass as the Packers scored on their first possession, covering 80 yards in nine plays. The Bears held him in check on the next three series and got within 7-3 on Robbie Gould’s 35-yard field goal at the two-minute warning, but the Packers closed the half with a seven-play, 65-yard march and a 14-3 lead courtesy of Rodgers’ two-yard TD pass to James Jones.

They seemed to find holes in the Bears’ pass coverage whenever it suited their needs.

McCown’s 49-yard hookup with Earl Bennett took the Bears to Green Bay’s 1-yard line on their first second-half possession, and Edwin Williams was credited with a touchdown when he recovered a ball Bell had fumbled into the end zone. The Bears were within 14-10 and still breathing, but not for long. Rodgers hit Jordy Nelson with an effortless 55-yard touchdown strike on the next series, and the rout was on.

Rodgers would find Jones for a seven-yard TD pass and Nelson for a two-yarder before sitting down one series into the fourth quarter. He finished 21-for-29 for 283 yards, five touchdowns, no interceptions and a passer rating of 144.3. He wasn’t sacked, the only stains on his uniform coming from four improvised scrambles for 18 yards, including a nifty 12-yard romp on which he slipped through Brian Urlacher and Lance Briggs, the Bears’ two best tacklers.

It was that kind of night for the Bears.

McCown, in his first NFL start since 2007 and his first appearance since 2008, was 19-for-28 for 242 yards, with one touchdown and two interceptions. He was more decent than spectacular, but he looked like Johnny Unitas compared with overmatched Caleb Hanie, who was sadly inept in four losing starts after taking over for injured Jay Cutler.

The Bears were riding high with a five-game winning streak and a 7-3 record when Cutler broke his thumb trying to make a tackle against the San Diego Chargers on Nov. 20. They haven’t won since. Injuries to Matt Forte, Marion Barber, Johnny Knox and Devin Hester would follow as the freakishly good health the Bears enjoyed last year deserted them.

And there went a promising season.

The Bears will wrap it up in Minnesota on Sunday, hoping to salvage an 8-8 record and a .500 finish. McCown will be at quarterback, hoping to delay the resumption of his high school coaching career with another quality start.

Maybe Derrick Rose will inspire him.

The one nagging criticism of Rose during three increasingly transcendent NBA seasons was his unwillingness to take or his inability to make the big shot—too often games were decided when the ball left someone else’s hands.

If the crunch-time spectacular is the wrinkle Rose has added to his repertoire for 2011-12 season, he unveiled it in the opener.

The Bulls had pulled within 87-86 on Luol Deng’s two free throws with 20 seconds remaining in the game, and they got the ball back when Deng knocked it away from Pau Gasol after they trapped Kobe Bryant as the Lakers inbounded, forcing Bryant into an errant pass.

Coach Tom Thibodeau didn’t take a timeout, trusting Rose to win it for him. The reigning MVP drove into the left frontcourt, then cut back to the middle. Gasol came out to challenge him as he entered the lane, and Rose flipped up a high floater that the Lakers’ 7-foot center couldn’t reach. When the shot dropped with 4.8 seconds left, the Bulls had an 88-87 lead, and it stood up as the margin of victory when Deng blocked Bryant’s attempt at a game-winning layup just before the buzzer.

This is a much different Lakers team than the one that has dominated the NBA’s Western Conference since Bryant arrived in 1996. Coach Phil Jackson retired, handing over the reins to Mike Brown, best known as LeBron James’ coach in Cleveland. Lamar Odom was traded to Dallas and Andrew Bynum is sitting out a four-game suspension, which meant significant minutes for newly signed veterans Josh McRoberts and Troy Murphy and second-round draft picks Devin Ebanks and Andrew Goudelock.

The Lakers, though, are still plenty dangerous with Bryant on the floor. Sore wrist and all, he managed a game-high 28 points, including an impossible baseline jumper over Deng and Joakim Noah that gave the hosts an 87-84 lead with 54 seconds left.

But that was the Lakers’ only basket of the final 2:11. They also missed four consecutive free throws in that span as the Bulls turned up their defensive intensity, closing the game with a 7-0 run and outscoring the Lakers 17-5 in the final 3 ½ minutes.

Rose had 22 points on 9-for-13 shooting, including 4-for-6 on three-pointers. Deng contributed 21 points, seven rebounds, four steals and two game-turning defensive plays—the strip of Gasol and the block on Bryant. Foul trouble limited newcomer Rip Hamilton to 23 minutes and six points on 3-for-8 shooting.

As satisfying as the win was for the Bulls, they had no time to savor it. Immediately afterwards they boarded a plane for Oakland and a Monday night game with the Golden State Warriors, who lost to the revamped Los Angeles Clippers in Mark Jackson’s coaching debut. The season was off to a promising start.

© DAN McGRATH for Chicago News Cooperative, 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Aaron Rodgers, Bears Packers, Bulls, Bulls Lakers, Chicago Bears, Derrick Rose, Josh McCown, Kobe Bryant, Los Angeles Lakers

How so? My wife had to take the car keys lest I go to meet the plane after the Warriors (as the Golden Eagles were called then) won the national championship in 1977. We were living in Reno, Nev., at the time.

I blame Al McGuire. Thirty-five years after he last coached there and 10 years after his death, he is to Marquette basketball what Knute Rockne is to Notre Dame football — less successful but more flamboyant, his showman’s antics and outsize personality overshadowing each of seven successors.

Critics said that he was more promoter than coach, that he didn’t know a pick-and-roll from a dinner roll, that his wily aide Hank Raymonds was really the brains behind Marquette’s hoops ascendancy. There is some truth to that. But to diminish McGuire’s role in the evolution of Marquette basketball — of Marquette University, really — is akin to diminishing beer’s role in the evolution of Milwaukee, something no right-thinking Marquette person would ever do.

McGuire recognized that an engaged student body would fill a building and create an intimidating home-court atmosphere that could help the team win games. So he not only treated us student journalists like human beings, but he also granted us a level of access unthinkable among today’s C.I.A.-inspired paranoiacs: Watch practice? Why not?

Heady times. In fact, it may well be that the first newsmaker I ever covered turns out to be the coolest and most interesting newsmaker I’ll ever cover. Nothing like peaking at 21, but that’s a story for another time.

Though he had never been a head coach when Marquette hired him in 1999, Tom Crean had enough panache and self-assurance to embrace the McGuire legacy rather than shrink from it. He rode a Chicago kid named Dwyane Wade to the Final Four in 2003, then had Marquette primed and ready for a no-sweat transition to the mighty Big East Conference.

But just as Crean was earning his stripes as a worthy heir to McGuire, he split for Indiana, hired to clean up the mess Kelvin Sampson had created by playing fast and loose with N.C.A.A. rules.

Reaction among the Marquette faithful ranged from anger to betrayal to outrage, as much for the dynamics of the move as for the move itself; the news broke before Crean could tell his players. Assistant Buzz Williams’s promotion to first chair hardly smoothed the waters, striking many as the uninspiring conclusion to a building-wide search.

Williams may have lacked big-time experience, but Marquette’s holdover players loved this down-to-earth, born-to-coach Texan and stuck around to play for him. Over time, Williams replaced Crean’s roster with one of his own making. He has had Marquette in each of the last three N.C.A.A. tournaments, reaching the Round of 16 last year, and a fourth appearance seems likely this season — Marquette was 10-1 after an eight-point loss at L.S.U. on Monday and has been ranked as high as No. 10 in the polls.

Crean for Williams: One of those rare trades that helps both teams.

I couldn’t fault Crean for leaving; he gave Marquette nine good years, which is almost a lifetime in college sports today. And his suitor was Indiana, still a magic name in college hoops despite Sampson’s brazen misuse of it.

Crean wanted another bite of the Final Four apple he’d had with Wade in 2003, and he was more likely to get it in Bloomington. You can’t deny a driven man his ambition. And after an uncertain start that tried the patience of Hoosier Nation, Crean is getting closer to achieving it.

Indiana slipped into the national rankings for the first time on his watch by clipping Kentucky on Dec. 10. Christian Watford’s buzzer-beating three-pointer touched off a wild celebration not seen in Bloomington since the pre-Bob Knight era. Wins, remember, were greeted with grim acceptance rather than happy exuberance during the general’s joyless junta. But Watford’s dramatic shot was symbolic of a corner turned, not cut.

Indiana is on its way back if Chicago is looking for a team to adopt. It’s one of the better-looking candidates out there.

Northwestern has surrounded the veteran John Shurna with enough complementary talent to end the world’s longest N.C.A.A. tournament drought — forever — although the Wildcats’ Big Ten schedule will be a tougher matter than their tissue-thin nonconference slate. Illinois achieved addition through subtraction with the departure of Jereme Richmond, a troubled young man whose next game may take place in a prison yard. He’s facing felony charges for gun possession.

Notre Dame, already rebuilding, was gravely wounded by a season-ending knee injury to Tim Abromaitis, its leading scorer. DePaul and Loyola renewed their ancient rivalry in a highly entertaining warm-up game. Neither looked good enough to recapture past glory, though the Demons’ nine wins have already exceeded last year’s victory total.

Among teams with local ties, undersize but feisty Marquette looks to be the horse to ride come tournament time, and I wouldn’t say that if I didn’t believe it.

I don’t think.

© DAN McGRATH for Chicago News Cooperative, 2011. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Al McGuire, Buzz Williams, college basketball, Hank Raymonds, Marquette University, NCAA, Tom Crean

To the fans at the arena, many of whom may not have born before 1981, the graying, balding Sting players meant little. Both the franchise and its league folded three seasons after that championship. Though they were eventually replaced by the Fire in a new professional league, soccer still lags behind hockey on the city’s sports Richter scale.

But for some, the presence of the Sting was a vivid reminder of past glories.

“Having them here at the hockey game was like opening a scrapbook,” said McDonough, arguably Chicago’s most successful sports executive, who got his start with the soccer team.

The Sting was Chicago’s brightest sports story in ‘81, drawing large crowds and commanding headlines for months in a colorful run to the title, won against the Warner Communications-backed New York Cosmos. The momentum continued when the team shifted to indoor play in the winter of ’81-82, with Sting games outdrawing the Hawks and Bulls in the old Chicago Stadium facility the teams shared.

“It’s hard to explain to people today just how the team captured everyone’s attention,” said McDonough, then the Sting’s sales director. “It didn’t make a difference whether you knew much about the sport, that team transcended in a way that never happened before in soccer. They had so much personality. They were pioneers. I feel privileged to have been a part of it.”

Chicago soybean trader Lee Stern started the Sting in 1975 and, in the buildup to that first title, developed a successful rivalry with New York. The powerful Cosmos were the villains, a free-spending, easy to dislike, corporate-owned franchise not unlike today’s New York Yankees.

McDonough said the Cosmos’ professionalism raised the level of the North American Soccer League, but Chicago beat New York twice in the regular ’81 season: 3-2 in overtime in front of 42,000 fans in Giants Stadium and 6-5 in front of 30,000 fans in Wrigley Field.

The Sting qualified for their first Soccer Bowl by topping San Diego 1-0 in front of 39,000 fans on a rainy, Monday night in old Comiskey Park. They beat New York 1-0 in a shootout in a Soccer Bowl game played in Toronto.

The heart of the team, assembled and coached by ex-player and Chicagoan Willy Roy, was a core of offensive-minded German players led by Karl-Heinz Granitza, Arno Steffenhagen, and goalkeeper Dieter Ferner. Argentine playmaker Pato Margetic became a crowd favorite with dazzling, creative moves.

“We were a good show and fans liked that when they came to games, lots of them for the first time,” said midfielder Rudy Glenn, who scored the winning goal against the Cosmos. “We always pushed for goals, showed that soccer doesn’t have to be dull. We came from behind so many times. Then you had Pato with that long, straight hair and I had long curly hair, and Davey Huson, with little hair, blowing kisses to the crowd when he scored.”

The stars were perfectly aligned for this gush of fresh air. There had not been a championship for Chicago since the Bears in ’63. In the fall of ’81 the Bears were headed for a last-place finish. That summer’s baseball season was shortened by a strike and the Cubs, at 27 games below .500, and White Sox were nowhere near the playoffs. Earlier that year, the Hawks and Bulls were swept in preliminary playoff rounds.

On the return trip from Toronto, the Sting was greeted by an estimated 6,000 fans at O’Hare. Thousands more, including then-Mayor Jane Byrne, cheered them during a LaSalle Street parade of vintage, convertible cars. Team captains Ingo Peter and Derek Spalding held the title trophy aloft in the lead vehicle.

“I still get people I don’t know come up to me to talk about that parade and everything else that went with it,” said Stern.

There was not another title by a Chicago team other than the Sting, which won again in ‘84, until the Bears Super Bowl win in ’85. Michael Jordan was still three years away from being drafted by the Bulls.

The North American Soccer League folded after the ‘84 season. From a high of 24 teams in ‘80, the league steadily contracted, dropping from 21 franchises after Chicago’s ’81 title to 14 the next year. There were only nine teams in the end.

Slipping attendance, lack of a lucrative TV deal, competition from other sports, and the high cost of signing talented players were among the reasons the league failed. Warner sold the Cosmos to after the ‘83 season, costing the league its well-funded, flagship operation.

“The ups and downs come in a hurry, so you learn to be measured in your approach,” McDonough said of the league’s decline.

McDonough joined the Sting in 1980 as a 27-year-old sales manager. His roles included escorting sponsors and making sure the artificial carpet used for indoor games was safely secured over the Chicago Stadium ice. McDonough had risen to vice president by the time he accepted a marketing job with the Cubs three years later. He eventually became president of the Cubs, leaving in 2007 to join the Hawks as president and chief executive officer.

McDonough’s arrival triggered a Chicago hockey renaissance and helped the Hawks win a Stanley Cup championship in 2010.

He has a reputation as an innovator who leaves the player-side of the operation to those better qualified. With the Sting and its small season-ticket base, McDonough and his front office colleagues, most of whom knew little about soccer, concentrated on drumming up sponsors and fans.

Those first pitches thrown by celebrities at Wrigley Field? The ceremonial puck drops at Hawks games? Long before they became standard operating procedure, Sting games had ceremonial kickoffs before every game. McDonough’s fan conventions, made famous with the Cubs and now copied throughout pro sports, started in soccer on a smaller scale.

“We didn’t always know what we were doing because everything was new, but we did plenty of it and kept at it,” McDonough said. “You did everything. It was great training.”

© mike conklin for Chicago News Cooperative, 2011. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Arno Steffenhagen, Blackhawks, Chciago Soccer, Chicago Sting, Cubs, Dieter Ferner, John McDonough, Karl-Heinz Granitza, Lee Stern, New York Cosmos, North American Soccer League, Rudy Glenn, soccer, Sports Marketing, Willy Roy

Rip Hamilton should be a nice addition, but at 33 he’s a minor player in the drama that has surrounded the next destination for Dwight Howard, Chris Paul and other luminaries. Tyson Chandler (Dallas to New York) and Shane Battier (Memphis to Miami) have moved along unencumbered, but the league preferred the Clippers to the Lakers as Paul’s new home once he left the league-owned New Orleans Hornets.

It turns out David Stern is retroactively upset over LeBron James and Chris Bosh’s conspiring to join Dwyane Wade in Miami last year. He’s concerned that a continuing migration of big names to glamour teams will further erode a delicate balance between have and have-not franchises that was supposed to be addressed in the new labor agreement.

Despite the presence of the most valuable player, Derrick Rose, the proud legacy of M.J. and a filled-to-bursting building in the nation’s No. 3 media market, the Bulls are missing from Howard’s “A” list of glamour teams. The New Jersey/Brooklyn Nets made the cut. If that rating is indicative of Howard’s sensibilities, do the Bulls really want him?

Much has transpired with other Chicago pro teams since the Bulls’ last took the floor in May for a cuffing from the Heat that ended an overachieving season in Game 5 of the Eastern Conference playoff finals. The White Sox have changed managers, the Cubs have changed their management structure, the Bears have changed quarterbacks and the Blackhawks continue to change their supporting cast — only eight players remain from the Stanley Cup-winning roster of 2009-10, a 62-percent turnover rate in less than two years.

The N.H.L.’s unforgiving salary cap forced the Hawks to jettison their Cup-winning depth, but as long as the Jonathan Toews/Patrick Kane-centered core remains, they have the look of a title contender. Time will tell if the Bulls can build on last season and make a similar claim once the ball goes up in earnest on Christmas, but it’s nuclear winter in other sporting corners of the city.

The White Sox’s status is the most puzzling. General Manager Ken Williams emerged the clear winner of an enervating and distracting battle of wills with Ozzie Guillen, and then asserted his power with a managerial hire that only he seemed to understand — Robin Ventura?

As beloved as Mark Buehrle was here, no one on the South Side should blame Williams for the classy lefty’s departure — the $58 million Miami gave Buehrle is $2 million more than he cost the Sox four years ago, when he was 28 and at the top of his game. Profligate spending is still part of the culture in baseball.

Williams knows it. The overpriced Adam Dunn/Jake Peavy/Alex Rios contracts left him too short for a meaningful Buehrle negotiation. So the Sox are back to living within their means.

Dwindling means? Williams is probably being honest in tamping down expectations for 2012 by acknowledging a need to rebuild, but his candor isn’t going to help ticket sales — Sox fans take a rather perverse pride in staying away from the ballpark unless the team is in serious contention.

And the timing is curious when the Cubs have generated a loud and persistent buzz with a brainy upgrade to their front office. Theo Epstein’s reputation buys him some time, and the N.L. Central is suddenly less imposing with Albert Pujols leaving, Prince Fielder likely to follow and Ryan Braun on temporary hiatus.

That said, adding Ian Stewart and David DeJesus won’t get the Cubs out of fifth place, but the roster moves have just begun. Even if the overhaul is more gradual than dramatic, the Cubs’ technocrats have the track record to reverse a commonly held perception that the front office is out to lunch.

The White Sox? Who knows. Best case: Dunn and Rios bounce back, Gordon Beckham rediscovers himself and they make a surprise run. Worst case: They don’t and Buehrle is their Jay Cutler, his departure engendering a Bears-like collapse. Who saw that coming?

Truth be told, the Bears can’t match the mighty Packers this season, even with Cutler on the field, but off he goes and they become the hapless, Manning-less Indy Colts. The drug bust of the backup receiver Sam Hurd is another bizarre twist in what has become a forgettable season.

A four-star defense was supposed to keep the Bears competitive, and it pretty much has. But those four stars — Brian Urlacher, Julius Peppers, Lance Briggs and Charles Tillman — have all passed 30, and the Not For Long reality of the N.F.L. will eventually claim them. The ominous thud that accompanied Cutler’s departure may well have been the sound of a window closing.

Which brings us back to the Bulls. Rose is the city’s No. 1 star, and he has no doubt added another wrinkle to his game, as the great ones do. Taj Gibson and Luol Deng elevated their play under Tom Thibodeau, and there’s less of Carlos Boozer to complain about — the land-based power forward has shed 20 pounds in an effort to increase his mobility.

But the road to the N.B.A. Finals still travels through Miami. I’m not sure the Bulls have packed enough for the trip.

© DAN McGRATH for Chicago News Cooperative, 2011. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Blackhawks, Bulls, Chicago Bears, Cubs, Dwight Howard, Ken Williams, Mark Buehrle, Theo Epstein, White Sox