Imrem: Bears to Arlington made whole lot of horse sense

So, the NFL decided that the Rams will move to Los Angeles and build a stadium on the grounds of the former Hollywood Park racetrack.

These developments serve as a reminder that the Bears should be playing their home games at Arlington Park in Arlington Heights.

Imagine the possibilities: Matt Forte could be referred to as a thoroughbred; Alshon Jeffery could be a last-minute scratch; Jay Cutler could be put out to pasture.

Seriously, I almost forgot that the racetrack site always was a better option for the Bears than playing on the lakefront in Soldier Field.

The Rams will settle in Inglewood, essentially a Los Angeles suburb close to LAX.

Hmmm, a football stadium on a racetrack site, in a suburb, near a major international airport …

Sound familiar?

I was so sure for so long that the Bears would wind up in Arlington Heights like the Rams will in Inglewood.

The week that Northwestern played in the 1986 Rose Bowl, I visited Hollywood Park to talk with their horse-racing executives.

I wanted to know whether building a football stadium on the grounds of a racetrack made sense or the Bears were using Arlington for leverage.

The response was they saw no reason why the Bears couldn't move out to the suburban track site.

Some traditionalists among Bears fans can't imagine traveling all the way to Arlington Heights.

The only problem with that is a large number of Bears fans, perhaps a large majority, can get to Arlington Park easier than to Soldier Field.

They could drive over from the North Shore and up from DuPage County and down from Rockford. They could fall out of bed in the Northwest suburbs and into the stadium.

Heck, some could sit back and ride the train out from the city to the Arlington Park stop.

That was the longtime plan. At various times during the 1970s, '80s and '90s, the Bears seemed destined to relocate to the burbs.

Bears founder George Halas died in 1983. Mike McCaskey became club chairman but clumsily failed to finagle a new stadium anywhere.

"My grandfather (Halas) surveyed the whole Chicago area for a new (Bears) ballpark 10 years ago and put Arlington at the top of the list," the L.A. Times quoted McCaskey as saying in 1985.

That was a week after a fire scorched Arlington and a stadium/track complex was proposed for the rebuild.

Now an office building and a strip of stores are on the site, though there still might be enough land for both the track and a stadium.

Regardless, club president Ted Phillips took over negotiations from McCaskey and the Bears had a new Soldier Field where the old one was.

Not necessarily a good new Soldier Field. Not necessarily one that's easy to get to. Not necessarily one that has enough parking.

Already, the Bears have to devote fresh revenue to make the stadium more suitable for the 21st century.

But a good guess is that Soldier Field still will be the wrong park in the wrong place.

Arlington Park would be better, but please don't remind me of that again.

mimrem@dailyherald.com