It was midway through a wintry third quarter at Soldier Field, the Chicago Bears apparently chilling Tampa Bay's mid-December victory fervor, when the Buccaneers decided to go for it on a rare and risky fourth-and-l0 just inside Bears' territory. A swing pass over a pathetic three-man rush and through a porous Chicago defensive secondary was completed, gaining enough yardage for a Bucs'' first down. "And these guys want millions of dollars for a new stadium," harrumphed George Weisenborn, sipping a beer as he watched the game on

24 * February 1996 Illinois Issues

television from the comfortable warmth of a suburban barstool 20 miles west of the lakefront stadium.

Never mind that the play was nullified by a Tampa Bay holding penalty. Or that, once again, the Bears went on to trounce the Bucs, one of their favorite patsies in the National Football Conference Central Division. For no matter what the Bears did (finish with a 9-7 record) or didn't do (make the playoffs) in the 1995 season, their on-the-field performance was always measured against an off-the-field scrimmage for a new stadium.

In this, the 90th anniversary of the forward pass as an offensive weapon, the Bears' quest for a new home — along with threats by team President Michael McCaskey to relocate outside Illinois and the overall shifting of professional sports franchises to cities willing to make a better offer — has itself become a weapon, offensive to the ideal of fan loyalty.

Weisenborn remembers only a decade ago, when the "Super Bowl Shuffle" played on the jukeboxes of blue-collar taverns, the Art Institute's lions donned oversized football helmets and the Chicago area reveled in the hype leading up to the Bears' stunning, and last, NFL championship. But the memories are already bittersweet. The community of fans that cheered to "Bear Down, Chicago Bears" in Super Bowl XX has begun to move, driven away by a business that has overtaken the romanticism of sports.

Gone are the long-ago "knothole gangs," the clubs for kids that teams created to get youngsters into the bleachers. Athletes now zealously renounce any responsibility as role models for the youth who buy the shoes they endorse, drink the beverage they endorse or eat the fast food they endorse. Want an autograph during the pregame warm-ups? Forget it. Go to an autographing session, fork over some cash and, please, only bring approved objects for the signatures.

The only signature that matters in sports now is the one on the bottom line. The bottom line of the athletes' contracts. The bottom line of the team owners' profit-and-loss statements.

And the bottom line of the stadium lease with local municipal officials. That adds up to disillusionment, with costs beyond what Weisenborn and the average fan can afford. But the costs also may be getting too high for elected officials, who must weigh their own political value in considering a public stadium deal.

Professional athletes earn a sizable paycheck, helped by a system of free agency that puts them up for sale to the highest bidder. The system forces owners to find new ways to make money to pay their stars, attract new ones and keep their teams competitive. As a result, teams are opting for free agency for themselves, heading for cities willing to offer the best deal.

Chicago is not alone in the stadium sweepstakes. Team owners have become more dependent on stadium-generated revenues to gain an edge, especially in the National Football League, which shares its television, merchandising and marketing income among all 30 teams and splits home ticket receipts with the visiting team.

Disputes over stadium-revenue packages and generous outside offers from formerly scorned suitors prompted the Raiders to move back to Oakland and the Rams to move to St. Louis last year, leaving Los Angeles, the nation's second-largest television market, without an NFL team. Stadium controversies also have the Cleveland Browns headed for Baltimore, the Houston Oilers on their way to Nashville, and Tampa Bay, the Seattle Seahawks and Arizona (nee Chicago and St. Louis) Cardinals threatening to leave for truly greener football pastures.

In essence, it's irrelevant where a team plays anymore, as long as it can secure enough in-stadium revenue from advertising signage, tickets, concessions, parking — even the naming rights to the building — to make the team prosper.

"It's not so much the size of the market. It's the stadium deal," acknowledges Ted Phillips, the Bears vice president of finance and the team's point man in the search for a new home. "Stadium revenues are what NFL teams are shooting for. The teams that are going to remain competitive need the additional unshared revenue."

In fact, the unrestrained excesses on player spending by owners striving to find new revenue is akin to a group of crazed credit-card carriers ransacking the local mall, each shouting vainly to the others: "Stop me, before I charge again."

Perhaps that is why the new stadiums have come to resemble malls.

The parade of souvenir stores, halls of fame and concession stands featuring fresh-cut deli meats, sprouts, yogurt, heart-healthy snacks and microbrewed and imported beers, along with comfy sofas in the lobby for the action-impaired, make it hard to tell exactly what city is the home team.

In their desire to squeeze more money from expensive stadium luxuries — corporate skyboxes and suites, club-level seating with table service, valet parking and the latest instant revenue device of personal-seat licenses, which give the holder the privilege of paying up front for the privilege of buying season tickets — the owners have created an economic divide in fandom, between the haves who can afford to pay and the have-nots.

Unfortunately, those owners seeking publicly subsidized sports facilities are often relying on the have-nots to pay for stadiums visited by the haves.

That may be why the Bears' McCaskey, in his search for a $185 million direct public subsidy for a new open-air, 10-days-a-year football home in Hoffman Estates, Aurora or Chicago, has discovered there's growing cynicism among Illinoisans about opening the cash register for another sports stadium.

"The whole thing is m-o-n-e-y. I hate to say that," says Republican Senate President James "Pate" Philip of Wood Dale, a longtime Bears' season-ticket holder, with tickets paid from his campaign fund.

"What are the two football teams that are normally doing well? San Francisco and Dallas. Why? They go out and buy the free agents. It's a mon-

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ey issue, and I don't think the owners are doing as well as the players."

The political and professional sports landscape has changed a lot since 1988, when Illinois taxpayers footed the bill for the new $150 million Comiskey Park, home of baseball's Chicago White Sox.

It took a governor who loved to build, bipartisan and regional deal-cutting and a Cinderella-esque declaration that the clock hadn't actually struck midnight when the vote was taken to construct Comiskey after the Sox threatened to move to St. Petersburg, Fla.

Not that the state was especially flush with money eight years ago. But, to a great degree, excess in political spending was in vogue then, and taxes levied to pay for the ballpark were collected largely from tourism-related sources. And, in retrospect, despite a clause in the lease requiring the state to purchase tickets and forego rent if Sox attendance fell, the Comiskey deal fashioned by then-Gov. James R. Thompson hasn't come off so bad.

But even White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf knew enough not to come back to the legislature a second time. Instead, Reinsdorf, who also owns the Chicago Bulls, joined with Blackhawks owner William Wirtz to privately finance construction of the United Center. Only a modicum of tax dollars for related public works were used for the new arena, which replaced the venerable old Chicago Stadium in 1994.

It would be easy to complain about the United Center, its Woodfield-like styling, its tendency to vacuum up the crowd roar, the sight of backpack-carrying vendors dispensing fruity Mai Tais at a hockey game, not to mention the cost of tickets, souvenirs or the $4.25 beers.

But, while the United Center has done nothing to alleviate the economic disparity among Chicago sports fans, at least Reinsdorf and "Dollar Bill" Wirtz are paying for the place themselves.

McCaskey also was supposed to be part of the new West Side development, with a football stadium in the United Center complex. But talks between McCaskey and Wirtz collapsed, and last spring the Bears came once again to the General Assembly looking for public funding to pay the bulk of a proposed $285 million open-air football palace. McCaskey found no takers among Illinois politicians, who found it hard to justify a controversial stadium-funding proposal for a sport that plays perhaps a dozen weekends a year. But that didn't stop an ambitious group of northwest Indiana business officials from proposing a $482 million economic revival project in Gary called Planet Park, featuring an open-air stadium and related entertainment and amusement complex.

Responding to the potential of a Bears' move, Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley proposed a $156 million upgrade of Soldier Field, for which Gov. Jim Edgar vowed to chip in $28 million for related public improvements. And just in case Soldier Field fell flat, Edgar held in reserve plans for constructing a $390 million domed multipurpose facility linked to the McCormick Place exhibition center, similar to a proposal rejected by lawmakers in 1991.

McCaskey doesn't want the team in a dome, but he'll take what he can get.

No one finds fault with McCaskey's need to improve his present deal with the Chicago Park District, which operates Soldier Field. The team gets little of the arena revenues that owners now thrive on and, structurally, the lake-front stadium looks as shaky as boxing's Gene Tunney did before a referee's infamous "long count" saved him in his 1927 heavyweight title defense against Jack Dempsey in Soldier Field.

It isn't surprising that during the 1995 NFL season, Soldier Field was the oldest stadium in use. The oldest stadium had been the Los Angeles Coliseum, but the Rams now play in the new $290 million taxpayer-financed Trans World Dome in St. Louis. The second-oldest stadium used last football season was built in 1931. That was in Cleveland, which has apparently lost the Browns to a new $300 million taxpayer-financed stadium in Baltimore.

"Cities are building and funding a lot of stadiums in the NFL," the Bears' Phillips says, citing a team-sponsored study that contends the Bears bring more than $150 million a year to the area's economy.

"I don't think all these cities would be throwing money on stadiums," Phillips says. "Look at Baltimore, St. Louis and Oakland, who lost teams. They've spent dearly. That lesson should not be lost on the city of Chicago."

But the ballyhooed economic development benefits of having a team may be largely psychological. Robert A. Baade, a professor of economics at Lake Forest College and a longtime analyst of sports economics, wrote in an April 1994 study that he found "no factual basis for the conventional argument that professional sports stadiums and teams have a significant impact on a region's economic growth."

Instead, Baade wrote, "stadium subsidies and other sports subsidies benefit not the community as a whole, but rather the team owners and professional athletes."

In his study for the Heartland Institute, Baade warned that "officials must evaluate whether the subsidized sports business would have the greatest net impact of available alternative uses of the money. ... Public officials must inevitably ask, 'Which is more valuable — more money for schools, roads, airports, police, tax reduction or stadiums?'"

Only in Indianapolis did Baade find a significant impact from sports on the local economy, citing the city's history of defining itself as the capital

26 * February 1996 Illinois Issues

of amateur sports and statewide backing for football's Colts and basketball's Pacers that is "stronger ... than is usual."

William Hudnut, the former Indianapolis mayor who now is head of the Civic Federation of Chicago, says the construction on the once-Hoosier and now-RCA Dome began in 1982 with hopes of getting an expansion team. The midnight ride of Colts' owner Robert Irsay's moving vans from Baltimore didn't come until 1984.

"We justified it on the grounds of economic development and enhancement of tourism, not on 12 days of a pro franchise," Hudnut says about constructing the $80 million dome, of which about half was financed through new taxes on food and beverages.

"Between building it and getting the Colts, we booked $185 million worth of business into an unfinished convention center. ...We filled it up with everything from circuses and tractor pulls to the NCAA Final Four."

But even Hudnut admits there is a limit to the taxpayer's wallet and desire to pay for a new sports stadium to keep a team happy.

"I think people are burned out on this subject nationally, and Michael McCaskey is catching the tail end of a revulsion in the mind of the American people on sports teams and perceived wealthy owners holding up the public," he says.

Of the large-scale publicly funded Stadium options that have been placed on the table, there may be more justification for construction of the so-called McDome project. Despite complaints a roof would put an end to frigid "Bear Weather," an indoor facility could be used for a variety of events that are too large for the United Center.

Still, with 1996 being a critical legislative election year that will test whether Republicans can maintain their recent hold on both chambers of the General Assembly, the political risk of embarking on construction of the controversial dome could prove to be too great. House Speaker Lee Daniels, an Elmhurst Republican, acknowledged as much shortly before the end of last year when he said Soldier Field should be renovated to maintain a centerpiece for the postcard lake front vistas television delivers to the nation from the blimps hovering over Bears' games.

No matter what happens to the Bears, the opportunity for the common fan to see a major league professional sports event is becoming more rare and less affordable as teams rely on the corporate entertainment dollar and other gimmicks, such as personal-seat licenses, to fill their seats.

Just last year it cost the average family of four more than $213 for tickets, parking, hot dogs, beer and soft drinks, a pair of programs and twill caps to attend one football game at Soldier Field, according to an annual survey conducted by Team Marketing Report, a sports marketing research firm in Chicago. That was $15 above the NFL average and a jump of nearly 9 percent over 1994.

The firm's copyrighted "Fan Cost Index," comparing similar amenities for a family of four spending a night out attending other Chicago professional sports venues, showed it cost nearly $238 for a Blackhawks' game and $222.49 for a Bulls' game. A baseball game, with more seating than hockey or basketball and more games than football, cost the same family $112.67 at Wrigley Field to see the Cubs and $110.73 at Comiskey Park to see the White Sox last year.

With prices like those, it's no wonder that a renaissance has taken place among minor league sports that offer families more affordable ticket prices, food, beverages and souvenirs. Teams such as baseball's Kane County Cougars and hockey's Chicago Wolves make up for the lack of professional star quotient through almost nonstop entertainment and promotions.

But smaller communities, believing sports are an integral quality-of-life factor, also are in bidding wars for teams playing in the minor leagues, helping to drive up the value of those franchises. Springfield lost its most recent Midwest League Class A baseball team last year after its owners moved to a new stadium in Lansing,

Mich. Peoria lost its St. Louis Blues' affiliation for the Rivermen of the minor International Hockey League last season.

The business of sports has taken advantage of the noble but intangible need for civic pride and boosterism among second-tier cities trying to earn big-league self-importance by opening their public checkbooks for expansion or existing franchises. But some communities are asking what priority sports should play in the ever-growing demand for the public's dollar, especially when teams forsake years of fan loyalty and move to cities with a better financial offer. That's why it's easy to understand the initial public support Chicago's Mayor Daley received when he proclaimed that the Bears "can move to Alaska" for all he cares. Despite the rhetoric, if the right stadium and money deal could be struck, if the price were right, nothing would prevent the team from becoming the Kodiak Bears. And how much further removed could the average Chicago sports fan get?

Indeed, the fans are rapidly becoming hostages to the demands made by professional sports teams. But the public is growing indifferent to the ransom note.

"As long as the game's on TV, who cares where they play?" George Weisenborn said as he took another sip of his beer and turned to watch the Bears on the bar's television set.

No, it wasn't the same as being there and he wasn't drinking a fruity Mai Tai. But he just didn't care. *

Rick Pearson is a Storehouse reporter for the Chicago Tribune.

Illinois Issues February 1996 * 27