O’Donnell: Echoes of the past say B.J. and the Bears don’t win nine games
THAT SOUND OF THE SEASON — the approaching NFL regular season:
It's not cicadas. It's not crickets. It's certainly not the sounds of silence.
It is the sound of pro football touts — relentless, larger in number than ever, generally more hollow than waiting on the possible 2054 release of “Happy Gilmore 3.”
(Netflix's current “Happy Gilmore 2” came 29 years after the original 1996 premiere of “Happy Gilmore.” Adam Sandler — in any decade — remains an acquired taste.)
BUT THE GRID-GOOSING '25 opinions and projections are out there, flooding contemporary electronica. The certainty of most presenters makes TV preacher Joel Osteen look timid.
Around Chicago, the critical number is 8½.
That's the dead-center wagering divide on the number of games Ben Johnson and the Bears will win this season.
It's the ultimate Probability Wha? of a 17-game season. Right in the middle, a prompt for the ghost of the mythical race caller Phil Georgeff to advise, “This one could go either way.”
IF JOHNSON'S FIRST EDITION were to play out to all game-by-game point spreads this season, the ensemble will awaken on the morning of Monday, Dec. 15 with a 6-8 mark.
That'll include a perfect 6-0 at home — set sail with a win in their Monday night opener on Sept. 8 over the visiting Vikings, who are holding at plus-1½.
The 0-8 road mark of the bad-travelin' Bears would set up a rough 0-3 close, according to the point projectionists, with Soldier Field losses to Green Bay (-1½) and Detroit (-1½) bookending a road tumble at San Francisco (-3½).
Final tally for B.J. and the Bears 1.0: 6-11.
STREET-BEATIN':
The most unlikely outcome of the five-game showdown between the Cubs and the Brewers, set to begin Monday afternoon at Wrigley Field, is a CHI sweep. A satisfying substitute for burnt-ivy fans would be if chairman Tom Ricketts announced he was only kidding about the Jed Hoyer contract extension. MIL's Pat Murphy now looms as a heavy favorite to repeat as NL Manager of the Year. …
Hottest baseball ticket of the local weekend was the two-game set of the Savannah Bananas at normally fan-frigid Rate Field. Owners Jesse and Emily Cole are sitting on a gold mine in expanded merchandising, animation properties and other ancillaries to come. Their yellow barnstormers have more than 10.5M followers on TikTok — a bigger niched audience than Major League Baseball. …
Dave Eanet's retirement as a full-timer at WGN-AM (720) slows one of the classiest careers of the last four decades in Chicago sportscasting. Eanet's even-keel was merely one part of a professional portfolio that included ambient voice, facile intellect and chameleon-like ability to blend in whatever the assignment. He'll continue to call Northwestern football and men's basketball. …
Johnny Burke — one of the legends of the hallways at Palatine High — is waving the Jolly Roger about the all-classes reunion set for homecoming weekend next month. The Pirates kick off the school's 150th anniversary celebration vs. visiting Glenbrook South Sept. 19. PHS holds a special spot in the history of Paddock Publications (parent corporation of the Daily Herald) — third-generation visionaries Stu Paddock Jr., Bob Paddock Sr. and sister Marge Flanders were all alums. …
Also from the back pages of the Daily Herald, new Chicago Public Media/Sun-Times editor-in-chief Kimbriell Kelly began her impressive career fresh out of grad school as the DH's Hoffman Estates reporter under editor John Lampinen back in 1998. Along the way, her rabid participatory sports passion became — dragon boating. (It's an ancient Chinese sport that involves long, narrow watercraft normally powered by 10 to 20 mad paddlers.) …
Jim O'Donnell's Sports and Media column appears each week on Sunday and Wednesday. Reach him at jimodonnelldh@yahoo.com. All communications may be considered for publication.