Imrem: At least Packers offer quality QB with the hot chocolate
The Packers' doused their attendance difficulties in hot chocolate last weekend.
Would that have worked for the Bears last month?
Certainly not.
Would it work for the Chicago Bears if they ever make the playoffs again?
Maybe.
Football fans have become more fickle. A confluence of events have made it harder to get them to watch games on TV, much less in stadiums.
Soldier Field does have fewer seats to fill than Lambeau Field has but flawless research indicates that fans here are less likely to expose themselves to frostbite than fans up there are.
The NFL's first-round playoff games lacked drama. Home teams won all four. Officials uncharacteristically ruled every caught pass a catch.
The only suspense was whether the Packers would sell out their game after seats remained available until the day before.
Among the excuses was that tickets are too expensive, but most compelling was that the temperature was forecast to be 10 degrees at kickoff.
In Green Bay? Cold weather in January? Who would have thunk it?
We're talking about a place where fans leave their shirts at home on frigid days, where the legendary Ice Bowl was played, where Lambeau Field is affectionately known as the Frozen Tundra … in August.
If the weather kept Packers fans from attending a football game, they might as well change the name of the state to Wussconsin … or North Illinois.
To finally sell out, the Packers promised each fan two free cups of hot chocolate.
How interesting that up there free hot chocolate is the dividing line between sitting out in the cold or sitting at home in room temperature.
So, why didn't the Bears offer hot chocolate to sell out Soldier Field last month?
Because down here the dividing line would be something more like two free Lexuses per fan.
It would be irresponsible to suggest that Soldier Field could have been filled in December by offering free hot chocolate.
The truth is that Bears ownership can't bribe fans that cheaply to watch bad quarterback play.
The real question now is whether the Bears could have sold out a playoff game last weekend with or without incentives.
Probably depends on whether the Bears had a legitimate quarterback.
The weather was chilly down here, too, and the sense is that Chicagoans aren't as mindless as the hearty souls to the north.
Wisconsineers - or whatever they call themselves - would take offense at anyone down here raising the issue of unsold tickets up there: "Hey, you guys had more than 25,000 empty seats in December."
Yeah, but the Bears asked people to watch Matt Barkley rather than Aaron Rodgers and a kiss-off team rather than a playoff team.
The Packers are good enough that all it took to sell their remaining tickets was two free cups of hot chocolate per fan.
Here it would take at least two Lexuses per fan to make it worth watching a Bears quarterback try not to embarrass himself in a playoff game on a freezing January afternoon.
OK, maybe the over-under should be three Lexuses.
The issue is moot considering the Bears don't figure to qualify for the playoffs for quite a while … or have a playoff quarterback for quite a while.
Who knows how climate change will alter the equation by then anyway?
mimrem@dailyherald.com