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Imrem: Time to let NFL pros take over Bears' football business

The criticism has gone from Jay Cutler through Marc Trestman to Phil Emery and now should land back at the McCaskeys.

Club chairman George McCaskey should call an emergency news conference for sometime today because the Bears' current crisis must be addressed at the ownership level.

No, not to publicly cut the quarterback, fire the head coach and reassign the general manager.

That would be asking too much for now. Actually, what I'm proposing probably also is, but here goes anyway.

McCaskey should announce that his family is aware of the unrest among Bears fans, is evaluating every aspect of the organization and soon will institute a massive change.

The shocker would be that the McCaskeys won't sell the Bears but will step back into absentee ownership by naming football professionals to reorganize the entire organization.

"Anything less would be selfish on our part," George McCaskey could say. "We want to keep the Bears in our family but acknowledge that we're not equipped to hire, fire and make other decisions for an NFL team."

The McCaskeys would continue to profit financially from the franchise, retain their Soldier Field suite and attend road games on the company tab.

However, the best full-service NFL veteran available - think Jim Finks in 1974 - would be hired to run the entire franchise.

The drastic move would answer the pressing question of whether the McCaskeys - or the McCaskets as one of our readers refers to them - are any more sensitive to the plight of the Bears than Illinois office holders are to the plight of the state.

Wouldn't you like to know that Mike Madigan cares enough for Illinois to move over and let someone else steer the state? The McCaskeys are to the NFL ownership what Madigan is to state politics: total failures as stewards of a cherished institution.

Yielding control might not be far-fetched. The family does love the Bears, wants to do what's best for the franchise and has to know by now that their shortcomings are limiting the product.

The McCaskeys have listened to the public before and proceeded to do everything from firing Dave Wannstedt as coach to replacing Mike McCaskey as chairman.

From matriarch Virginia McCaskey on down, they must expect an embarrassing number of no-shows for Sunday's home game against the Vikings.

Right now the McCaskeys should be thrilled that Bears fans are angry.

The next step is anger becoming apathy on Chicago's streets and taverns. That's what happens when fans believe ownership is dysfunctional and the team is in disarray.

The public might even sense that if the McCaskeys owned another treasure like, say, Mount Rushmore, presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abe Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt would undergo makeovers to look like the Kardashians.

The McCaskeys have to realize that they squandered a Bears identity after George Halas spent decades establishing his players as aggressive, physical and unyielding in victory or defeat.

The McCaskeys inherited that type of team from Papa Bear and proceeded to compromise it to the point of this season's namby-pamby edition.

Everyone in the NFL knows that they are what their records say they are.

The Bears won Super Bowl XX with players, coaches and systems that Halas left the McCaskeys in 1983.

Since the final remnants of that championship team faded away in the early 1990s, the Bears have qualified for the postseason only five times and won only four playoff games.

The McCaskeys are what their record says they are and down deep must know it's time for them to sacrifice their labor of love for their love of the Bears.

Bears fans can only hope they become absentee owners.

mimrem@dailyherald.com

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