Lovie or leave it: Smith’s here to stay
Lovie Smith is difficult to bear even when the Bears are winning.
When they’re losing, his gibberish becomes insufferable … impossible … intolerable.
The Bears are losing now, losers of four of their past five games and inventors of new ways to convert success into failure.
As I responded to an emailer soon after the latest loss, if the Bears fire Smith today it would be about three years too late.
Smith said Monday of his job security, “It’s all based on wins and losses, really.”
The problem with that assessment is that there always seems to be a supernatural force at work in Halas Hall when it comes to this particular Bears head coach.
Don’t expect Smith to be whacked anytime soon. You know, like the next 30 or 40 years.
I have surrendered the notion that my lifetime would outlast Smith’s lifetime contract with the Bears.
If Smith doesn’t win another game this season, misses the playoffs for the fifth time in six seasons and approaches his 10th season in the position being nothing more than a middle-10 NFL coach …
General manager Phil Emery will brain cramp and extend Smith’s contract a few dozen years anyway.
All this speculation over whether Smith will be with the Bears beyond this season? Stop it: Lake Forest will go bankrupt before he goes anywhere.
When Smith is in the final year of his next contract, President Tebow will be running the country.
America will be $156 trillion in debt, politicians will be dangling us over an umpteenth fiscal cliff, and the only people able to pay their mortgages will be employed in professional sports.
A Manning will be quarterbacking every NFL team. The Kazakhstan Borats and Pluto Goofys will be the league’s latest expansion teams.
The Bears will travel to road games via spiritual transportation. Concussions will have reduced the league to seven-man touch football.
The White Sox will draw 5 million fans in a season before the Bears decide they need a new head coach. The Cubs will … OK, so they won’t have won a World Series, but the Ricketts will connive public funds for another and another Wrigley Field renovation.
We’re talking when? Maybe 2040 before Bears management has 2020 vision and sees that Smith isn’t worthy of coaching this fabled franchise’s Monsters.
Today, for myriad fans and me alike, when the Bears win the players are responsible and when they lose Smith is irresponsible.
At Halas Hall, when the Bears win the coach is responsible and when they lose everyone else is.
Over nine years Smith has been given more money, more authority and more of everything except more blame.
The Bears’ latest struggles will be attributed to injuries. The players will be accused of underachieving. Former general manager Jerry Angelo will be hung in effigy before Smith is hung out to dry.
Sorry, it’s difficult to imagine anybody but Smith coaching the Bears until there’s a Burger King in every McDonald’s and a McDonald’s on every space station.
When your grandchildren have grandchildren, Smith will be standing on the Bears’ sideline looking as befuddled as he has the past month.
So do yourselves a favor and accept the fact that Smith will be the only man to coach the Bears against RGIII, RGIV and probably even RGV.
Lovie Smith is destined to dribble gibberish here for the duration of what essentially is a lifetime contract.
mimrem@dailyherald.com