Imrem: Bears prove NFL owners can win for losing

So, Forbes' latest calculations value the Chicago Bears' franchise at $2.45 billion.

That ranks eighth in the NFL. Meanwhile, various football analysts rank the team anywhere from 25th to 32nd in the 32-team league.

Who says you can't win for losing?

Someone please tell me how many businesses whose product quality is in the lower quarter are valued in the top quarter.

We like to think we put out a pretty good newspaper here. Judging by the Bears, maybe we should, by design, plunge to the bottom 25 percent in quality to ensure that we be in the top 25 percent in value.

It's hard to argue with the notion expressed in past years that the Bears' franchise under the McCaskey ownership is an underachiever.

On the field, it has been forever since the Bears were what a fabled franchise should be.

Maybe you heard of the '85 Bears. They won the city's only Super Bowl championship ... 30 years ago!

Off the field, the Bears failed for decades to get a new stadium. They finally succeeded and it has one of the NFL's smallest seating capacities.

A case can be made that Chicago is the NFL's best market. No wonder television outlets love the Bears.

Yet the Bears can put little more than 61,000 fans in Soldier Field when they probably could sell 100,000 season tickets every year.

The Bears remind me of the popular theory that Major League Baseball players' salaries are so high because they are the 750 best in the world at what they do.

That logic ranges between balderdash and poppycock.

The world's 750th-best dry cleaner doesn't earn a minimum of around a half-million dollars annually, nor does the 750th-best drugstore cashier or, sad to say, as far as I can tell the 750th-best newspaper sports columnist.

Baseball players are paid all that money because they work in an industry that generates all that revenue.

Which brings us back to the NFL, the Bears and the McCaskeys.

All of them are getting rich in an industry that generates enough revenue to choke a 400-pound nose tackle.

What a financially fortuitous formula it is: One game per week per team that TV networks are lining up to win the rights to broadcast.

The McCaskeys, bless them, can have a small stadium and a bad team and still support their myriad family members.

The Bears can afford to hire a laughable head coach and fire him after two years, along with the general manager responsible for him having been here in the first place.

The McCaskeys can afford to pay a flawed, failed quarterback dozens of millions of dollars to be their flawed, failed quarterback.

The Bears can get loyal fans to pay exorbitant prices for upper-deck seats that include many that are far enough from the field to qualify for residence status in a different time zone.

Seriously, the McCaskeys and their 31 NFL partners would have a difficult time squandering their good fortune even if they tried.

Even if the Bears won more games, the McCaskeys might not be able to make more money or have a team worth more than $2.45 billion.

Some fans have longed for the day when the family would take the money and run, and it long has been suspected that some McCaskeys would like to.

Ah, but then other family members likely would buy up their stakes and why not?

There aren't many businesses in which an owner can prosper with an inferior product.

Yes, fans, an NFL owner can win for losing.

mimrem@dailyherald.com