I’ve been super hard on George McCaskey forever and that’s because I’ve always seen him as this huge raging mega boner. He’s a guy who lunges for the free t-shirt at a Bulls game and prefers a good sirloin. He drives a Buick and enjoys butterscotch hard candies. For fun, he organizes Civil War memorabilia in a storage locker hidden from his wife. He dresses in old union garb and calls himself Colonel McCaskey while arranging historical battles with miniature figurines on an elevated 7′ x 10′ wooden platform that cost $13,000 to custom make with hydraulic lifts to represent the changing battleground topographies. And he eats peanut butter sandwiches with skim milk. There’s always peanut butter on his mustache and he usually drinks the milk too fast, resulting in a tummy ache.
That’s what I think of George McCaskey and I might have been wrong this entire time based entirely on his answer to a simple question about the Tush Push.
And in that realization, what I’m seeing is a guy who’s really emerging in the wake of his mother’s death. We always assumed he’d just roll over and sell the team after the funeral but that also appears to be another incorrect assumption.
And while I’m kinda joking, I’m also kinda serious. Watch that clip back and you see a poised man with a sensible answer. He talked to the experts. He made his own best decision based on what was explained to him by smarter and more knowledgeable people. There’s so little ego on display that it becomes refreshing.
And with that, a broader realization about the Bears. We’re always complaining about institutions that are soulless and don’t care about the consumer. We’re in this post-modern dystopian world where Home Depot’s gonna sponsor the Gulf of America and that might impact the price of lumber long-term. It’s sad and capitalistic and transactional and emotionless.
The Bears are the complete opposite of that.
We may be pathetic on the field more often than not. But we got family values and good people working for this organization. We got good bones and values and ethics and integrity. Compared to other organizations in Chicago, there’s absolutely no comparison in this arena. The Chicago Bears are a family first, community-based franchise and it goes back to McCaskey values.
Unfortunately there’s almost no connection between that and onfield performance. At least not yet and that’s where I’m holding out hope. Maybe George has what it takes to step forward and maybe he’s just been hiding in the shadows behind Virginia this whole time. They’re extremely private so you can’t say for sure, but I know I’m not overreacting when I say that George McCaskey is slowly winning me over this offseason. And quite frankly that’s a big step in the right direction.
PS – The Tush Push is fuckin bullshit. Good call George.