Round and Round

As I mentioned yesterday, I was at Halas Hall for my second Advisory Group meeting on Monday. We discussed a bunch of topics: a kids' club (the benefits, how much it would cost, one time or renewal, etc), a womens' club (same topics), the benefits of our stadium club seats, some marketing stuff....it was good. All except for one....small.....event.

First, some history: about 7 years ago the Bears drafted Cedric Benson with the fourth pick of the first round. My buddy, Mike, who has since moved to New Jersey, and I went to Soldier Field to watch a practice.  At the time, Benson still had not signed his contract and was holding out for more money. At the draft he stated he wouldn't hold out, so it was pretty annoying. The Bears had been notoriously cheap with their players and many fans, myself included, were upset with them for not signing him to a contract to get him ready for the regular season. He held out and missed all of training camp before eventually signing a 5 year deal worth $35M.

So at this practice, I was VERY audible about the Bears paying Benson his money and to stop being cheap. During one of my public rants, a Bears employee pipes up from behind me that "maybe Benson doesn't WANT to sign!"  Well of course he doesn't want to sign, I snorted, the Bears are too cheap to pay the market rate he wants. "Their current offer is for $17M guaranteed, which is more than what the fourth pick got last year." At this point he seemed very unhappy with my arguing, so I let it go (I didn't want to jeopardize my relatively new season tickets).

Back to Monday night at Halas Hall.  They showed us the images on the tickets which had a different player on every ticket. The first ticket was of Henry Melton, a defensive tackle that started 15 games last year, but is really just a rotational guy with three or four other guys. "So what do you think of the look?" we were asked. "Well, is that Melton on the opening day ticket?" From behind me came a voice saying, "Yeah, what's wrong with Melton? He's starting."  So I turn around and say, "Well maybe he is starting for us, but I don't know about an NFL starter."  And then I get the feeling that I've met this guy, a Bears employee, before. Yep, it's the same dude from 7 years ago. His name is Adam and he's been with the Bears since 2000.

When we went to our breakout session I asked him if he remembered our "discussion" from 2005. He did not as apparently he's pretty opinionated himself and it surprised nobody with the Bears that I would have had such a conversation with him. Too funny how stuff comes around like that.