LAKE FOREST, Ill. — In retrospect, I should’ve gone to the Cubs reunion at the Chicago Theatre on Thursday night.
“The Lovable Reunion” podcast live taping had a full house of hooting fans, several 2016 Cubs on stage, Pete Crow-Armstrong in the audience and an impromptu performance from Eddie Vedder.
But instead I drove up to Lake Forest and saw “Talking Football with Kevin Warren” at Gorton Center, a community arts venue five miles east of Halas Hall. Warren’s event had about 75 well-mannered people, including Republican gubernatorial candidate Darren Bailey, who sat in the front row.
I have been to Gorton Center’s John & Nancy Hughes Theater several times over the years to see my daughter in various plays. Those performances drew much bigger crowds.
Then again, at least this talk didn’t get canceled. Many years ago, Warren’s predecessor as president of the Bears, Ted Phillips, was scheduled for a “Lunch with a Legend” interview series show with ESPN 1000, but it was called off because of low ticket sales.
Thursday night was a conversation with writer David Sweet, an affable man who wasn’t going to test Warren’s nerve by asking him hard-boiled questions about the seemingly never-ending pursuit of a new stadium for the Bears. I hoped for some spirited questions from frustrated Bears fans, but I left disappointed.
I skipped living in the Cubs’ past to see whether Warren had any clarity on the Bears’ future home in Arlington Heights, Ill., or Hammond, Ind. Warren hasn’t talked to reporters in a bit, and the Bears are waiting on Illinois politicians while seriously looking into moving the pride and joy of the state to Indiana.
Sweet did ask about the state of this debacle, but all Warren said was the Bears have spent the six weeks since their June 4 declaration focused on Hammond doing “due diligence” and environmental studies. He reiterated the team needs tax certainty, committed infrastructure money and “really good partners” for a new stadium project.
Sweet mentioned Arlington Heights in his question, but Warren, showing message discipline, did not.
“It’s been a challenge, but they’re all a challenge. U.S. Bank (Stadium in Minneapolis) was a challenge,” Warren said at one point. “It’s our job to continually stay positive.”
I thought there might be a live Q&A, but instead ticket purchasers could write out questions. Sweet read seven of them. None that were picked were direct questions about the stadium process, and two were nonsensical. (Of the latter, one read: “My wife is 5 feet, 110 pounds. Can she be a pass rusher?” Warren gamely attempted an answer.)
Two questions came from the caustic keyboard of Tim Boyd of Palatine, Ill., a Bears fan who attends a handful of home games and at least one road game per season. He showed me an email he sent with a list of stadium-related queries, many of which were admittedly rude, pointed or unlikely to be picked.
One of his questions that got asked was about Warren’s feelings on turf versus grass, considering he is dead set on building a stadium with a fixed roof. The other insinuated that Warren is not a real Bears fan, though Sweet didn’t read it that way. For the former, he said … basically nothing. They’d study the issue.
Boyd came to the event with his friend Jake Butman from Highland Park, Ill. They buy tickets every year through a season ticket holder and are disenchanted with Warren’s leadership on the stadium situation. So needless to say, they were not impressed with the event. Though, to be fair, it was planned by Gorton Center, not the Bears and Warren.
“I don’t even know why he did this, actually,” Butman said. “I would love to give him a truth serum and be like, ‘What was the purpose of this whole thing?’ Because it felt like such a softball, comfy, cozy situation.”
Because this was a conversation with a famous person type of event, a good chunk of time was spent talking about Warren’s background. For instance, he explained why he is obsessed with building things. (Warren has talked adoringly about seeing cranes in the sky.) He said it stemmed from his days growing up in Phoenix. First, he was a paperboy, and he liked looking at the different houses on his route. And during college, he worked summers in construction, where he learned about preparation, teamwork, etc.
Warren said U.S. Bank Stadium came in under budget and that he’s “neurotic about numbers.” Good news, I suppose, if the Bears ever start building a stadium.
One thing that bothered Boyd and Butman was Warren saying that his main focus is doing right by the fans. While they don’t think the Bears end up in Indiana, the two find the entire song-and-dance insulting.
“(The northern suburbs) to out west is all your season ticket holders,” Butman said. “If you care about them, why are you going to Indiana?”
While Boyd lives close to the Arlington Heights project, he said he’s not only grown tired of the rhetoric, but he also doesn’t trust the Bears to follow through on their promises to build a “world-class” stadium. Boyd, a bit of a pessimist, expects the worst if it gets done at all and said that at this point, he’d rather see the team fix Soldier Field.
Training camp starts in two weeks, when the focus will shift to Caleb Williams and Super Bowl dreams.
When asked about general manager Ryan Poles and coach Ben Johnson, Warren said he told them that they remind him of songwriters Hal David and Burt Bacharach. Warren said Poles and Johnson were understandably confused about the outdated reference.
“I told them to keep putting out the hits,” Warren said.
Those two almost found the way to Santa Clara, which is close to San Jose, so I get it. But what the Bears world needs now is more than love — they need results.
From Warren to Williams, the Bears have a lot of work to do to reach their lofty goals. The players and coaches need to build on last year’s success, and Warren needs to erase his years of failure. Easier said than done on both accounts.
At the end of the conversation, Sweet asked Warren what he is looking forward to this season.
“I’d say I’m most excited about starting 0-0 and figuring out how to win again,” Warren said.
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