O’Donnell: Bears schedule release tops all this week, including the Cubs-Sox series
ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA, Major League Baseball owned the spring.
Sure, the Masters was a nice weekend among the azaleas. And the Kentucky Derby perennially loomed as a reminder of when daily thoroughbred racing was indeed the stock market of the common man.
But the NFL? Atop the marquee in April and May?
As unlikely as paying for commercial TV in the home or purchasing drinking water outside of it.
ALL OF THAT HAS BEEN gradually changing since the Nixon presidency.
This week, the dominance of attention that the contemporary National Football League commands will once again mesmerize, perhaps no more so than right here in captive home Chicago.
The official 2026 NFL schedule release will happen at 7 p.m. Thursday (NFL Network, ESPN2, NFL+).
In the interim, international games will be announced or confirmed at 8 a.m. Wednesday on “Good Morning Football” (NFL Network).
EVEN CASUAL BEARS FANS will be taking note. The hardest-core — including season-ticket holders and especially those who travel to follow the stumbling stadium drifters — will be breathless.
The mass exercise in calendar circling will divert so much fan energy that a question in play becomes: How much will be left for the Cubs-Sox series, set to begin on the South Side on Friday night (with all three games paywall-free on WCIU-TV “The U”)?
WHAT IS ASSURED IS THAT sometime before the clock strikes midnight Thursday, multiple media outlets will post updated projections on the final record of Caleb “Ice Too” Williams and the '26 Bears.
(It says here the median will be 10-7. Numbers with greater gravitas will emerge from Las Vegas with the over/under for all 32 NFL teams. The Bears should be 9½ or 10½. A Halloween bye week pumps the over.)
THE NFL SCHEDULE RELEASE isn't complete artifice. It is a necessary unveiling as a prelude to yet another 18-week fall all about the thrill of victory and the agony of yellow flags.
But its place of predominance on a Chicago sportscape featuring two MLB teams sprung out and movin' on up would force the forefathers to scratch their batting helmets.
WHAT WAS ONCE a modest press release is now touching national spectacle.
And in Chicago, if the choice is the Bears' new schedule vs. a Cubs-Sox weekend series, results are as predictable as a Cole Kmet block.
What the “offseason” of the McMonsters has become is like bottled water and cable TV.
STREET-BEATIN':
The Bulls have both the No. 4 pick in the 2026 NBA draft and a new head of basketball ops in Bryson Graham. He's a well-regarded fellow who has less than a 1% chance of winning a league championship within the next five years while working under the burden of “The Curse of the Breakup.” His best friend would be telling him to leverage his fresh post into a spot with an organization more committed to great things on-court. …
Far too many metrics in MLB, but here's one for fashionably hip stat consumers: Cubs catcher Carson Kelly leads both circuits with an 89% success rate (17-of-19) in challenges under the new Automated Ball-Strike system (ABS). That's quite a combo of instincts and eye to manhandle a pitcher's newest best friend. …
Old friends continue to toast the elevation of Palatine's Cassie Carlson to lead sports anchor at WFLD-Channel 32. As Cassie Jane Chaplinsky, she was a volleyball standout for coach Dan Gavin's Pirates (Class of ‘13). In tandem with Tina Nguyen, Carlson — a University of Illinois grad ('17) — gives WFLD Sports a fresh alternative look. Interesting to see if the Fox station can extend Bears' auxiliary programming rights …
Saturday's Preakness Stakes has devolved into little more than a glorified regional runabout (3 p.m., NBC; post time — 5:50 p.m.). The no-show of late-running Kentucky Derby winner Golden Tempo isn't helping. With creaky Pimlico undergoing a long-overdue renovation, Laurel Park will host, with a seating capacity of only 4,600. It's must-miss TV — Taj Mahal will be no worse than second. …
Back to the NBA: The Jazz — picking at No. 2 — are rumored to be aggressively doing all possible to assure they cut a deal with No. 1 Washington to keep AJ Dybansta, the BYU star, out by the Great Salt Lake. That'd leave the Wizards likely selecting Duke's Cameron Boozer, who would look so good in a Chicago uniform that it hurts. …
And obstructed-view seats for that Cubs-Sox crosstown at Rate Field are going for more than $60 on the secondary market. During the past three seasons of Diamond Drano on the South Side, they should have been the most expensive seats in the house. …
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.