O’Donnell: Are Bears and others tracking Seattle-New England blueprints to SB 60?
WAS IT PAUL BROWN, BILL BELICHICK OR CHER AT THE 2026 GRAMMYS who said: “There are 10,000 ways not to get to a Super Bowl and only a few ways to win one?”
Full truthiness: None of the above.
But the fact that both the Seahawks and the Patriots have traveled the Microsoft tablet less taken by contemporary NFL organizations to Super Bowl 60 Sunday can't be lost on minds from Halas Hall to all pro football compass points north, south, east and west (5:30 p.m., NBC).
THE HOT TREND IN THE LEAGUE has been to hire an offensive-minded young head coach and match him with a budding miracle worker at QB.
(Lake Forest, hello.)
Seattle and New England have come from another direction.
Perhaps that's why the Seahawks were 60-1 to win SB 60 in August and the Patriots 80-1.
IN SEATTLE, DEFENSIVE MASTERMIND MIKE MACDONALD has been a critical architect of the renaissance.
Longtime general manager John Schneider — once a protege of Green Bay's northwoods-changing Ron Wolf — has been brilliant, never more so than when rushing to point-click Macdonald as his head coach.
WITH NEW ENGLAND, Mike Vrabel has combined old-school Belichick defensive sensibilities with timely new-mill tactical aggressiveness. The fact that Eliot Wolf — Ron's son — is his de facto G.M. hasn't been lost on deepest Super Bowl screen readers.
So a Serlingesque Brett Favre-Reggie White vibe manifests itself on both sides around Sunday's grid gorilla.
APPROACHING MIDWEEK, THE SEAHAWKS are holding as 4½-point favorites. They're drawing two-thirds of all bets with 73% of money wagered on the game line. The big green flood will come Sunday.
The late Brown, Belichick and Cher might be watching.
STREET-BEATIN':
One word for the White Sox snub of Frank Thomas as a valued contributor of color to franchise history on the threshold of February's Black History Month — “disgusting.” But also predictable, since Jerry Reinsdorf has been mad at the world since Walter O'Malley moved his beloved Dodgers out of Brooklyn in 1957. Chicago fans have paid far too steep a price for Reinsdorf's Flatbush pique. …
The simulcast addition of WSCR-AM (670) to FM-104.3 Monday allows a segment of pastime-challenged Chicago to get to hear what tedium sounds like on two radio bands. The full reality is that parent company Audacy has diminished resources to devote to fresh quality programming. Top saving grace for the frat-rot wailers at “The Score” is that ESPN-AM (1000) is generally even more numbing. …
That recent Viking funeral at “The Score” underscored the fact that Dan Jiggetts was the single most important talent hire in the history of the station. Way back in 1992, the presence of ol' No. 62 — a supremely affable Harvard grad who played for the Bears — gave a clawing band of budget hires credibility and a chance to touch restraining grace. Contributors Jimmy Piersall and Norm Van Lier also helped. …
The Illinois men — now up to No. 5 in the latest AP Top 25 — continue to give the Orange faithful reason to believe. Keaton Wagler and the OK dawgs took a punch at No. 9 Nebraska Sunday and came back to win. Up this week: They host Northwestern Wednesday (8 p.m., BTN) and are at No. 10 Michigan State Saturday (7 p.m., Fox). …
Reaction to the hiring of Todd Monken as head coach of the Browns by NFL-scarred Cleveland fans has been tepid at best. That's unfortunate for the Wheaton North alum ('85), a classic grinder who comes from a remarkable football family. Owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam have never shown a fully functional understanding of the city's faithful-to-a-fault football heartbeat. …
No one had more reason to cheer Indiana's recent CFP championship than Fred Lussow. The Arlington Heights native was a multi-purpose back in Bloomington during the Death Valley Days of 1961-65. The longtime District 214 coach and teacher was also part of a remarkable startup group at Prospect High that included Bill Zadel, Mark Thorne, Fred Empke and George Pomey (who was starting PG for Michigan alongside Cazzie Russell in the 1965 NCAA title game vs. John Wooden's UCLA.) …
Nuanced question said to be making the NIL rounds from some of the nation's top basketball prospects and their “people” to college suitors: How long is your longest bus ride? (Cutoff point for some stars is reportedly 90 minutes to two hours — after that it's either fly or “bye bye.” …
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.