Jim O'Donnell: From the Bears and Arlington Park to Erin Andrews, 2021 will hopefully lead to 2022
THREE RELEVANT ROCK 'N ROLL QUOTES to fill in for the late Dick Clark as yet another surreal New Year's continues its creep toward midnight:
• "The future's uncertain and the end is always near." - Jim Morrison and The Doors;
• "I want my NFL." - What Mark Knopfler and Dire Straits meant to say in the vocal intro to "Money For Nothing"; and,
• "You're probably wondering why I'm here, and so am I, so am I." - Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention.
So, in the trifling Cocoon of Man known as "sports & media," a look back, forward and for cover as 2022 closes in.
TOP LOCAL STORY:
The Bears to Arlington Park - Geez, a multibillion-dollar sports franchise, underserved by its cramped urban home, proactively seeking a modern colossus in an upticked suburb.
What a concept.
Who came up with it?
Frederick Law Olmsted? Daniel Burnham? Stan Kroenke?
Still, this is Chicago, Cook County and the state of Illinois, where there are thousands of ways to get a deal done and thousands of ways to muck it up.
The most curious parts to reconcile remain the assertiveness with which Bears ownership pursued Arlington and the thoroughly predictable on-field dysfunction that George McCaskey and Ted Phillips continue to oversee.
If Lori Lightfoot isn't moving toward a creative counterproposal to keep the McMuffins in Chicago, she just ain't thinking like a mayor who wants a second term.
TOP NATIONAL STORY:
Below the ongoing pandemic, all else is just that.
But, topping the s&m big-picture chart:
The NFL's new TV deals - Over the next 11 years, The League That The Stone Tablets Commanded will realize more than $110 billion from the four legacied network groups plus Amazon.
That's enough to get a B-level conference room at The Pentagon.
The move of "Thursday Night Football" to Prime Video will be the most seismic shift in NFL presentations since "Monday Night Football" was switched over to all-cable ESPN in 2006.
Smart people say Al Michaels is a lock 'n a shoo to be Prime's inaugural play-by-play man.
Whiny Troy Aikman may wind up doing color as he continues to chase Tony Romo-level money. (Which he's not worth - at least not north of Tulsa.)
OTHER NATIONAL STORIES OF NOTE:
The increasing financial fragility of regional sports networks - The Chicago area won't be in the first wave pushed to extinction. But if the national empire of Sinclair Broadcasting collapses, the whole ecosystem will quiver.
The culprits: Decreased ad revenues and the steady rise of cord cutters.
Tom Brady - Clearly, America doesn't know enough about the man.
A bank of 24/7 live cameras in his homes and vehicles would help fill in any remaining blanks. With the more provocative portions available only on NFL-sanctioned pay-per-view.
Color commentary could be provided by Queen Latifah and Norman Chad.
The torpid state of Major League Baseball as a TV product - A "Field of Dreams" game is a glow-in-the-dark bath plug in a hurricane. Between strikeouts and metrics, the game has become as exciting as Tony La Russa at a Jerry Manuel retrospective.
Attempting to watch a MLB game on television can only make the more cynical thank Al and Lesley Gore for inventing the DVR.
Name, Image and Licensing rights for college athletes - Again, what a great concept. Too bad Abe Lincoln and media consigliere Bookman Marconi didn't cover all of this in The Emancipation Proclamation.
Imagine - talented American adolescents no longer have to forfeit four years of prime foundational wealth-acquisition years while the adult salesmen above them go "bank."
Now how long until a University of Kentucky-area car dealerships sports the first $10 million, 7-foot-1 Euro stepper?
FROM THE 2021 LOCAL LINE:
The Matt Nagy Separation Watch - Insensitive, mean-spirited and inhumane - and that's just for the fans who've been following it.
If this were the Shogun-era Tokyo Bears, Nagy would already have done the honorable thing and fallen on his Denny's menu.
Instead, like a Cody Parkey field goal try into the doink, the man just continues to twist in the late-season wins.
Team tidings at WLS-Channel 7 News - Mark Giangreco made a puckish deadpan about news anchor Cheryl Burton "playing" a sitcom character who was "ditzy" and "combative."
So Burton took it personally and combatively and Giangreco was left to wander as a wit with both local celebrity and departure money.
John Idler - Channel 7's seasoned president and GM - handled the matter with all the deftness of a drive-through cashier at Chick-fil-A suddenly handed a flaming briquette.
The station's nightly newscasts now appear like an endless stream of weekend presentations. Idler long ago should have been chasing Lauren Jiggetts of milkman's hours at WGN-Channel 9 News as his outlet's No. 1.
But Jiggetts - a Harvard grad - is far too balanced and sensible to go that route.
The flatlining of sports talk radio in Chicago - The interchangeable audio door codes at WSCR-AM (670) and ESPN AM (1000) must be "dronish" and "boring."
The two relics continue to split the same 5% or so of people still listening to terrestrial radio in Chicago. Neither shows any evidence of having money for impacting new talent or promotion.
Good Karma Brands brought in Mike Thomas from rabid Boston sports radio two years ago, ostensibly to pump some life into AM 1000.
Instead, COVID hit, advertising revenue tanked and Thomas returned to Beantown last month.
Chroniclers know it's a rough year when Chicago's most memorable sports talk moment of 2021 was David "Chatty" Kaplan's now-mythic 25-minute audience punisher at the annual Chicagoland Sports Hall of Fame induction dinner.
Anthony Petrillo's Arlington Park press box clear out - Tough enough that the local oval apparently ended racing forever in September. Some would call that carpetbagging capitalism at its worst.
So it was an appropriate send-off a month before when the low jackals of Churchill Downs Inc.
allowed their local minister of mirth Petrillo to commit an unconscionable executive action.
On "Mr. D Day" - an afternoon intended to honor the legacy of Dick Duchossois - Petrillo, tossing a bizarre snit, stormed into the press box less than 75 minutes after the end of live racing and ordered all working media out.
Primetime Duchossois would have horsewhipped Petrillo with a countering executive action before midnight.
Instead, CDI chairman "Bunker" Bill Carstanjen OK'd the release of a nonsensical statement that essentially said his company really, really likes media and dumb things can happen only if people elect to correctly perceive them as dumb.
Quite an imaging coup.
AND FINALLY, SPORTS-TINGED COMMERCIAL of the year:
Erin Andrews for the 2022 INFINITI QX60 - The first storyboard primer at the ad agency might have read only: "A middle-aged lady explains why she's getting into a new car."
But it's Erin Andrews. And 17 years after she first hit the national radar working those magical Dee Brown/Deron Williams Fighting Illini basketball games with Steve Lavin and Brent Musburger on ESPN, she's still Erin Andrews.
Crack sports journalist. Still as telegenic as Elvis on his 1968 "comeback special" for NBC.
The 30-second spot is stylish and totally "of the now."
Andrews is never identified and doesn't mention her own name or standing.
Women of flowing taste and refinement will likely find it engaging.
Red-blooded men "of the now" will find it yet another reason not to race out car buying after watching automobile commercials during NFL games.
And from The Insouciant Wind-Up, all positive vibrations for health, perspective and fulfillment in the New Year.
• Jim O'Donnell's Sports & Media column appears Thursday and Sunday. Reach him at jimodonnelldh@yahoo.com.