Jim O'Donnell: With deadlines for Bears on QB and draft, is Arlington Park also moving forward?

TRY AS ANY CAVE DWELLER MIGHT, it's impossible to dispute that the Bears currently own the Chicago sports marquee.

Cody Bellinger, Connor Bedard, Jerry Reinsdorf's latest try to swill at the public stadium cash trough — all are fine dot-dot-dot stitch-ins suitable for a column's end.

But way up firm and high are the Bears. They are an ongoing item of civic discourse that tower above any mayor, Gov. J.B. Pritzker, even the possibility of Taylor Kelce-Swift-Kelce slipping in a couple of fresh encore nights at Soldier Field as her globe-trotting Eras Tour finally winds down later this year.

The media dominance of the Bears is predicated on three questions. Two have identifiable shelf lives and will be answered by stipulated deadlines. That duo would be: 1) What are Ryan Poles and his football ops staff going to do with the 2024 Draft (to be held April 25-27 in Detroit); and 2) Who will the team's No. 1 QB be when the NFL winds of September finally begin to blow serious once again?

QUESTION NO. 3 HAS the greatest long-term implications and the answer, my friend, keeps blowin' in the tax-uncertainty wind.

That would be: When is a decision whether the organization is going to proceed with the development of the 326 acres that once housed Arlington Park or sell the beckoning tract of prime, Grade-AP northwest suburban real estate going to be announced?

Friday, for the first time in a while, there are indications that the inevitability of the Bears fulfilling all coherent expectations about a new stadium with pricey residential development on the Arlington site will move forward.

SOME BACKGROUND:

· Friday began the new fiscal year of the team;

· Kevin Warren's one-year apprenticeship as president — and purported chief stadium whisperer — ended a few weeks ago;

· No one at Halas Hall is getting any younger while those tea dances with Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, Naperville, Aurora, Richton Park and Your Suburb Here have gotten pretty exhausting.

Any leverage that Warren and Co. might have generated over the Arlington Heights-Palatine-Rolling Meadows triumvirate and local school districts has peaked.

For the team to bail on Arlington Park and resell the land — even at an incremental profit — would be a most unfortunate blow to the organization's league-wide standing and global brand. It would greatly reinforce the persistent notion that the McCaskey Bears are an antiquated mom-and-son operation that is frightfully ill-suited to compete in the new-mill NFL.

AS AN INDIVIDUAL WITH KNOWLEDGE of the team's strategic options told the Daily Herald Friday: “Kevin's No. 1 role is to get a new stadium built. The McCaskeys went far out of the organization to bring him in. The expectation is that there will be significant acceleration on the stadium project now much sooner than later.”

If there isn't, Warren is suddenly attempting to manage a very public stalemate. He also becomes of diminished value to the Bears.

What Warren hopefully understands — and the McCaskeys should be fully versed on this item — is that the availability of the AP land took an amazing sequence of events to make happen.

Forget about the more recent profit motivations of Bunker Bill Carstanjen and Churchill Downs Inc. That's now tic-tac-dough corporate mash best left to equity apple bobbers on quarterly earnings calls.

A CRITICAL PEG ON THE ROAD to demolition began as far back as 1991. That was when first daughter Dayle Duchossois-Fortino and husband Ed Fortino suddenly left the family race-track operation. They did so because of a disagreement with paterfamilias Dick Duchossois about the structuring of the executive chart at the local oval.

Had the Fortinos stayed, there is a significantly increased chance that the inter-family baton passing would have been smooth and that Arlington Park would continue to operate today with the active participation of the Fortinos and subsequent generations of the Duchossois family.

Instead, it's now desolation row at Euclid and Wilke. And a once-in-a-century opportunity for a horizontaling sports and show business outfit to lift itself into the new NFL age continues to blow in the tax-uncertainty wind.

POLES WILL MANAGE the draft and quarterback matters for the McVacillators. His long-term future in Lake Forest is not likely to be decided in calendar year 2024.

Warren is on a very different play clock. It's been close to 30 months since the purchase agreement between the Bears and CDI was announced. It's also now been more than a year since the $197.2 million sale was executed.

A short-term “give” with regional taxing entities by the Halas-ites could result in massive big-picture gains. There remains major gold in the acres as the Bears stadium and adjacencies was initially envisioned.

Even a cave dweller would probably recognize that and thump forward with precision, goodwill and urgency.

Can Kevin Warren and the Mach-profile Bears?

Jim O'Donnell's Sports and Media column appears each week on Sunday and Thursday. Reach him at jimodonnelldh@yahoo.com. All communications may be considered for publication.