Sale of Bears Projected

The Bears are cited in a CBS Sports article as one of the next teams most likely to be sold after the recent sale of the Denver Broncos.

Pause here for laughter.

The basis for this article is reported "internal strife" among the ownership McCaskey family according on an old column by Jim O'Donnell of the Arlington Heights Daily Herald, but there has been so-called strife reported in the past numerous times and it never reached a point where a sale was possible. By internal strife they mean some McCaskeys want out while others want to maintain status quo.

Certainly at this point any strife would fade away considering the pot of gold awaiting the McCaskeys.

There's one real reason why this idea in the article by John Breech is ridiculous and anyone who read O'Donnell's column would probably have known what that is. O'Donnell's paper is located in this reason.

The Bears are going to be worth so much more when they finally have the new stadium built in Arlington Heights at the Arlington International Racecourse site, and for the McCaskeys to sell now would be a matter of flushing cash down the toilet. They definitely have never been about doing that.

Make no mistake, there will be a stadium. The Bears are expecting to close on the property sometime early next year, according to team CEO Ted Phillips.

According to a source, one McCaskey family member has been seeking to buy various commercial properties not far from the the old track.

Stadium funding is the name of the game, now.

The CBS article cites an estimate that the Bears are worth $4.075 billion. Forbes has had them at this in their annual projection of sports teams' values. The CBS Sports article says they could go for $5 billion.

Add billions to this if the stadium funding can be achieved, because it's not likely to be a stadium just for football.

The CBS article, which lists the Saints, Chargers, Seahawks and Commanders as other possible teams to be sold, points out that Virginia McCaskey is 99 years old "...and it's not clear what's going to happen with the team when she's gone."

What's going to happen is they'll make a lot more money by keeping the team until at least after the Arlington Heights stadium is built. And that's too long of a way off for the franchise to be put on a list of likely sales.

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