WITH MCCASKEY’S PASSING, THE BEARS HAVE NEW LIFE — RYAN? PRIVATE EQUITY?
Patrick Ryan owns 18 percent of the franchise and deserves a larger share and greater control, while the NFL explores private equity — Jeff Bezos? — as an additional way of financing 32 powerhouses
A meeting with Patrick Ryan seems larger than the Chicago skyline. Last I saw him, in Copenhagen, he stared me down after the city lost the Summer Olympic Games to Rio de Janeiro. I didn’t blow the bid as much as a local committee’s bus excursion on South Lake Shore Drive, which didn’t impress the International Olympic Committee. Also, European visits from Barack Obama and Oprah Winfrey didn’t matter.
Ryan is an insurance billionaire whose name is everywhere, such as at Northwestern, where a new Ryan Field is being constructed largely with his money. He is 87. He owns 18 percent of the Bears and has a prominent son in business, Patrick Ryan Jr. We were sorry to hear Thursday morning about the death of Virginia Halas McCaskey, who was 102 and enjoyed one victorious Super Bowl in the name of father George.
It allowed me to think of the future of the NFL franchise.
And Ryan, for one.
The league requires the McCaskey family, perhaps 13 members, to control at least 30 percent of the Bears. This could become very dicey. Will equity be sold for a $6.4 billion franchise? Chairman George and the family have said they wish to keep the team — into the “second coming,” son Pat said. But as the NFL has seen in Denver after Pat Bowlen’s death and other complicated situations, some members might want to sell because of taxes and, oh, decades of massive public criticism. The league’s new path to a private equity plan could bring owners from beyond Chicago and America, which might prompt a metropolis of nine million people to throw a month-long party.
For now, with his net worth of $11.9 billion, why can’t Ryan buy more of the Bears and assume greater control for his family? The franchise is in the hands of president and CEO Kevin Warren, who is pleased about new head coach Ben Johnson but remains lost in his search for a new stadium. This is one of the murkiest, weirdest teams in the NFL and any sport. Virginia has passed away.
Who’s next? Private equity?
“I do think it is an avenue that can be helpful from a capital standpoint,” said Kansas City Chiefs owner Clark Hunt, who is chairman of the NFL’s finance committee,
Here’s another: Jeff Bezos thought about buying the Washington Commanders and Seattle Seahawks. Would he have interest in the Bears? Billionaires across America would love a chance to revive the team. Commissioner Roger Goodell wants to be faithful to families, but the McCaskeys have had no clue what they’re doing. Here is an ideal opportunity for the league to cast a strong presence in the nation’s No. 3 market. Said Goodell: "Faith, family, and football — in that order — were her north stars and she lived by the simple adage to always ‘do the right thing.’ The Bears that her father started meant the world to her and he would be proud of the way she continued the family business with such dedication and passion."
For now, a city is in mourning. The NFL will pay tribute Sunday at the Super Bowl. “While we are sad, we are comforted knowing Virginia Halas McCaskey lived a long, full, faith-filled life and is now with the love of her life on earth,” the Bears said. Halas left the franchise to her brother, George “Mugs” Halas Jr., and then to Virginia after his death.
“I hope to justify the thing,” she told the Sun-Times in 2018.
Did she?
She did not.
But a new owner would.
###
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.