Getting fired up for a Bears experience just starting to bubble
Whether you’re an avid Bears fan or an occasional follower who just starts waking up at NFL playoffs time, you likely identify closely with the lead on our Mike McGraw’s column on the front of Tuesday’s Sports section.
“This is just how the Bears do things,” Mike wrote. “They'll lay low for several years, let expectations fade to zero, invite derisive comments from all corners of the NFC North. Then, bang — they win a division title no one saw coming and host a playoff game.”
I’m not sure I’ve read a more accurate description of the Bears fan experience generally, and it certainly applies to the overachieving squad under new coach Ben Johnson. As Mike points out, Bears fans entered the 2025-26 season with higher hopes than expectations. Now look; they’re the No. 2 seed in the wild-card round of the NFL playoffs.
From a general newspaper reader’s perspective, Saturday’s game against the Green Bay Packers probably still qualifies as a “wait-and-see” event. The team wasn’t expected to get this far, and they’re 1-1 in two close contests against the Pack this season, so while we can brace for an exciting match, the pre- and postgame coverage will have that feeling of a pot beginning to bubble but just getting ready to boil.
Much will change if home-field advantage helps push the Bears to victory in what is expected to be another cliffhanger, and as a hometown paper, we have a special sense of suppressed excitement preparing for coverage of what will increasingly become a cultural event rather than an attraction primarily for die-hard sports fans and occasional hangers-on.
If nothing else, it will be a welcome diversion from the political controversy and global tension that have dominated the news in recent weeks.
Not that high-stakes international conflict, consequential government actions or sensational political statements should be subordinate to an entertainment vehicle. They should not and will not.
But when entertainment events become regional or national spectacles, they do take on new meaning. They both provide respite from the weighty affairs of the day and help prepare us to handle them.
Mike’s insightful Tuesday column, while geared to Sports fans, has much to offer us all, noting that in the long-term the 2025-26 Bears offer the divergent prospects of familiar disappointment (“The Bears have proven over and over again that success doesn’t necessarily lead to more success. Sometimes it’s the top stair.”) and legitimate enthusiasm ((“What better way for (quarterback Caleb) Williams and Johnson to show there are Super Bowls in their future?”))
If you missed the Tuesday Sports column, you may want to go back and look it up. But if you’re just getting ready for whatever may lie ahead this weekend, you can take some heart in its concluding paragraph.
“We’ve got a new season on the horizon,” Mike quotes Coach Johnson. “Our guys should be reinvigorated by that. I get fired up just thinking about it right now.”
So do we. And that’s a good feeling to have.
• Jim Slusher, jslusher@dailyherald.com, is managing editor for opinion at the Daily Herald. Follow him on Facebook at www.facebook.com/jim.slusher1 and on X at @JimSlusher. His book “To Nudge The World: Conversations, community and the role of the local newspaper” is available at eckhartzpress.com.