GEORGE MCCASKEY IS THE REAL VILLAIN OF HALAS HALL AND SHOULD BE REMOVED

The former ticket manager is nothing but hogwash as the Bears chairman, which is why the team hires inferior coaches, general managers and executives and will lose unless mother Virginia says goodbye

Inside America’s worst sports town — from the Eberflus-enraged Bears to the 121-loss White Sox — let’s ask angry demons to address fans and media. Why aren’t folks looking high enough in the hierarchy of shame? My years in Chicago always directed observers to the family-layered owners, people with riches. My editors didn’t like me. Screw them.

George H. McCaskey was the senior director of ticket operations. Beyond distributing season passes and instructing people how to walk from Burnham Harbor, he had nothing in his resume to become chairman of the Chicago Bears. He wears an orange tie and a mustache. His middle name is Halas. He calls himself “a recovering lawyer” after passing the Illinois bar exam. He also worked in TV news in Chicago, Phoenix, Tulsa and Peoria.

There you have it.

In his 14 seasons atop a $6.4 billion operation that defines the identity of America’s third-largest market, McCaskey is less equipped to run the Bears than you or me or Neil Fak in “The Bear.” Isn’t it time to start treating him as The Next Jerry Reinsdorf?

Or worse? At least Reinsdorf won with the Bulls in the ‘90s and once with the White Sox in 45 years of ownership. George? He has fired five head coaches, three general managers and three offensive coordinators. He has managed two winning seasons and zero playoff victories. His record after firing Matt Eberflus — who was paralyzed when a timeout was demanded and allowed a Hail Mary to blitz his fan-obsessed cornerback — is 93-130. He is 37 friggin’ games under .500. He is why the Bears reek. He is why the Bears never will build a new stadium. He is why they’ve stretched their Super Bowl loss run to 58 in 59 years.

George is in charge because his mother, 101-year-old Virginia McCaskey, deemed him worthy in the footsteps of only three other men. One was his late brother, Michael, who was loathed publicly by Mike Ditka. Another was his father, Edward W. McCaskey. And the other, of course, was his grandfather, George Halas. The McCaskeys inherited the Halas way. They have nuked the foundation for decades.

We can agonize about Eberflus all we want, knowing he failed as Matt Nagy, John Fox and Marc Trestman failed after Lovie Smith was let go. We can empty innards as GM Ryan Poles enters an on-deck circle of animosity while Kevin Warren, the president and CEO, only has crashed in the ballpark political merry-go-round. In the most critical bottom line, they were hired at Halas Hall by McCaskey, who conferred with his mother and 87-year-old Pat Ryan, the owner of a significant minority interest. They are managing the show in Lake Forest. They are why the Bears occupy the ridicule stage in the NFL. And until we do something with George, they will keep losing as he spreads shoddy dust over the next coach while franchise values rise toward $8 billion.

I would like to fire him as chairman. Let’s begin the process.

Wouldn’t we love to see Virginia, at her age, realize that George and Michael were flops and that Ted Phillips also was a flop before Warren replaced him? Wouldn’t we love to see one shaky hammer, from the top, hire someone who might straighten out the unfixable? My idea is allowing Bill Belichick, the greatest of NFL coaches, to walk into the facility and flip a collective bird while taking control of the entire operation. If Jaylon Johnson was ready to charge toward Eberflus in the Detroit locker room, let Belichick have him. If Poles was ready to change coaches after the New England game and McCaskey said no, let Belichick own the ruling. If Gov. JB Pritzker won’t let the Bears have a stadium without more private money, let Belichick set up a long meeting. If Caleb Williams doesn’t like questions about his play from a six-time champion — he has spoken negatively about Poles and a flawed system — let him have long talks.

But to land Belichick or anyone else with hope, such as Ben Johnson, the Bears will have to spend big money. This is where they become the Misers of the Midway. Belichick was making about $25 million annually before he was let go by the New England Patriots. George was paying Eberflus about $4 million a season, in the league’s lowest range. They will not pay up for Belichick or Johnson, just as they wouldn’t pay up for Nick Saban when he was interested in the early 2000s.

So they want Thomas Brown to succeed as interim head coach, knowing he would make Eberflus money. They must love how Sean McVay, coach of the Los Angeles Rams, enjoys praising his former assistant. “I know he's always been a guy that's had an incredible command. He's been a great competitor. He kind of demands respect from people that he's around just by the way that he carries himself,” he said. “He's done a great job, obviously, but it's unique in which the circumstances have come about but he's going to attack it. I think guys will follow his lead.

“In this profession, you just have such an appreciation for how challenging it is, how difficult, how volatile, and I think he's going to do a great job. These aren't necessarily the circumstances that you wanted to occur. I know how much respect he has for coach Eberflus, but he is a guy that you guys have heard me talk about. We had a chance to work together for a few years, but I had a chance to compete against him, and there are just certain people when you watch, you're like, man, they're a little different in terms of the competitiveness, the spirit and the never-say-die attitude.”

Brown might continue his success with Williams, but he’s in a division with three exceptional coaches in Dan Campbell, Matt LaFleur and Kevin O’Connell and skilled general managers. Rather, the Bears should move on from George. On the team’s seven-person board of directors, Warren and Ryan are the only members who aren’t from the Halas/McCaskey lineage. Oh, if Virginia would look beyond the lineage. But one name possibly might have a bullet. In the late 2000s, Ed McCaskey Jr. played baseball at Wheaton College and studied sports marketing in minor-league baseball. He might be young enough to help and bring modern thoughts. He is Virginia’s grandson.

One immediate idea has another McCaskey on the board, secretary Patrick, making it clear to Belichick that he wrote a book about him. Normally the author of stories about sports and faith — such as Poems About The Gospel — Pat wrote “Bill Belichick 101” in 2017. Maybe Grumpy should be informed about the author. Maybe he’d show up for an interview, at least.

But please know Belichick isn’t coming when the pay is paltry. He’ll keep chuckling at the Bears, who make his ridicule funnier. We thought it was sickeningly unfair to deal with Reinsdorf in all his lax seasons. Compare him to McCaskey, who should be mailing tickets and, somehow, is wrecking an NFL franchise with no clue what he’s doing.

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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.