td

For the Bears game. I will certainly be drunk-ish by halftime.
Our draft will still be hours away. Im laying this on the hearts
of each of you so you can determine how much generosity
you want to show me.

td

sashank varma

I used to think Chicago was a Bears town. We could disagree
about baseball teams, about whether hockey counted (even
dissidents like myself admire handsome embroidered Hawks
jerseys), and about the merits of professional basketball
and the seedy lifestyles of its players. But beyond all of
these disagreements we all followed the Bears. Now I'm not
so sure.

Anyone besides Granville read the Bears newsgroup? The
difference between the Bulls and Bears newsgroups has
become striking in recent months.

Both teams draw fans from the same population of Chicagoans.
Both teams have stunk for a number of years.

The Bears fans have grown bitter and trollish as a result.
There's little actual football content to the posts over
there, and much talk about pedophiles, politics, Randy
Moss, the state of Wisconsin, oral sex, etc.

The Bulls fans, by contrast, have adopted an ironic stance
towards their team. They discuss its travails from a
detached perspective, and thus avoid getting weighed down
in all the losing.

What's up with that?

wealtheow1

I think that this is because it still is a Bears town. The
local football club just means more than the Bulls, who
after all have players who do things like sit out games with
phantom injuries because they need a hug.

That said, I'm seriously pissed that the Bulls suck. I spend a
good 30 minutes on game nights laboriously tuning in a fuzzy AM1000,
400 miles away, just to hear them lose (and the post-game rant).

AG

td

">

Thank god for irony.


td

x

I was driving back from Moline (don't ask) listening to the
Bears game and trying to figure out how I could tinker with
my car radio in order to drive 50,000 kilowatts into the
face of Hub Arkush. So I haven't even looked at what I wound
up with. I don't think I will tonight, because if my team
sucks, I at least will go to bed for one more evening with
the feeling of a champion (sniff sniff).

Re: the Bears group, you're right about the different tone.
Possibly it's because of the sudden change. The Bears have
gone from having the greatest team ever into a slow but
irresistable decline with little peaks here and there. The
Bulls on the other hand went from the greatest team ever
(statistically anyways - 72-10) to crap. Six titles to
worst record over a five year period (is it six now? Seven?
I don't know.)

So it's kind of hard to get upset over a team that is, as
that weird Italian guy used to say, "isn't designed to win
now." It's designed to win in the little marshmallow world
in our head, which is the only place it ever does.

God I just depressed the hell out of myself. Go Bulls!

marc heiden

I think that one factor is the different roster sizes and number of
games. Bulls fans have to deal with 82 games of the insane foibles of
Curry, Crawford, et al, whereas when a truly magical idiot like Henry
Burris comes along, Bears fans have to watch him for 16 games at most -
more likely one or two, and then they're done, somebody else is in
there. The Bulls have to keep "developing" said idiot for years to
come. Outside of the QB position, thanks to the salary cap, football
teams don't really have to commit to most players for more than one or
two seasons. There's no comparison in the NFL for a guy like Eddie
Robinson getting to hang around for six years and being this much of a
drag on a team. (Cade McNown was a flash in the pan by comparison.)
It's the difference between sitting next to an obnoxious stranger on
your way to work versus your way to Oregon. So, really, as fans, our
only defense is to develop an ironic distance from what happens on and
off the court. If there were 16 games and a revolving door we might
manage it, but there's no way you could endure being fully emotionally
invested in these Bulls for 82 games every year. You'd use up any
emotion you chose to expend.

g. smitts

Ghost if I ever buy a newspaper Im hiring you as a sportswriter.

x

If I wrote for a newspaper, the articles would consist of,
"Last night's game reminded me of the first time I ate peas."
Then I'd go into that anecdote for six or seven paragraphs,
ending with "...and the Bulls still suck." It wouldn't be
the best place to get the gnuz, but once I a week I'd talk
about all the trade rumors in the league. Except that I'd
just make ones up. Sort of like what Sam Smith and Peter
Vecsey already do, only I'd have agonized poets reading it.
Not enough newspapers read the vital but underappreciated
agonized poetry market.

brad

yep, there's still some sort of misplaced and saddened passion remaining
here. goddammit, i'm australian and i still put in the effort to "watch" the
games live (on nba.com) if i can, or check the boxscores asap, just to see
if any of our starters has scored more than our losing margin. it doesn't
happen often, but it's worth checking.

oh, irony, right.

--
[- brad -]
[- www.livejournal.com/~kesher -]