Daily Herald opinion: With prospects for state funds predictably gone, it's the Bears and village at the table

If Las Vegas oddsmakers were to make book on whether J.B. Pritzker would cough up serious money to facilitate pulling the Bears out of Chicago to relocate to Arlington Heights, the payoff would be about as big as betting on 70-year-old Jimmy Connors to come out of retirement to win a third Wimbledon singles title.

It was never going to happen. And while the window hasn't completed shut on the McCaskeys getting some financial assistance from the state to build a domed stadium and entertainment complex on the 326-acre site of the Arlington Park Racecourse, movement in Springfield surely indicates many hands are pushing hard to seal it.

A $400 million legislation fund to boost business - including electronic vehicle business - this week was saddled with the codicil that none of that money could be used for a pro sports team's intrastate move.

That portends gloomy odds against the Bears getting any meaningful assistance. Despite their 3-14 record, no one in Chicago wants to see them go.

Stadium magnate Bob Dunn says he knows what Soldier Field needs to become a world-class venue as part of his One Central project - an expansive lakefront development project that seeks much more sweeteners from the state than the Bears would want to get them to move to Arlington.

To that end, he released a splashy 6-minute CGI video Sunday narrated by none other than golden-throated Chicago icon Bill Kurtis, that shows a Soldier Field of the future recognizable only by its colonnades. That is certain to buoy many Chicagoans who have seemed resigned to lose the team.

Chicago is a town not accustomed to backing down in a fight. Certainly not with the suburbs.

Chicago also is the nucleus of Democratic power in Illinois. Were the Chicagoan governor to open the floodgates with spiffs for the Bears to move west, he'd seal his fate in Illinois. Even if that money came from his personal bank accounts.

Gone would be a third term and hampered would be a run for president.

For almost 16 months, the focus, understandably in this newspaper, has been on the Bears pulling up stakes and building a larger and domed stadium that could be a year-round hive of entertainment - and local revenue - a property large enough to build ancillary entertainment, restaurant and hotel amenities that NFL teams come to expect these days.

The Bears signed a $197 million option to buy the racetrack land in September 2021. Decision Day on whether the sale goes through is in a few short weeks.

With forces working against any sort of state handouts, the decision on whether the Bears build new comes down to the McCaskeys and the village of Arlington Heights.

And that's who has always been at the table. The issue of state funding has been a pipe dream and a distraction.

It's all a matter of what the village and its kindred taxing bodies are willing to do to make it happen.