The Bears

The Bears Sent in Mr. Wolf

Roger Goodell sat down with the governor on Thursday. Hammond wasn’t in the room, Pat Ryan was. And his own stadium opens tonight.

Chicago · 2 October 2026

Roger Goodell was in Chicago on Thursday. The commissioner of the @NFL sat in a downtown room with Governor Pritzker, House Speaker Chris Welch, and the two lawmakers who carry the stadium bill, Kam Buckner and Bill Cunningham. It was his second sit-down with Illinois officials in two months.

One man was there for the @ChicagoBears. Pat Ryan.

George McCaskey was not on the list. Kevin Warren was not on the list. Seven weeks ago those two stood up at Halas Hall and said Hammond, Indiana was the team’s sole focus. On Thursday the team’s future was on the table with the governor, and neither of them was in the room.

Mr. Wolf knows how to clean up a shit show. He knows Jules and Vincent need to get every piece of that brain and skull up to pass muster. He does it with swag. And fast.

Ryan built Aon, the insurance company. Forbes has him at about $9 billion. He bought into the Bears in 1990, and after a deal last year his family holds about 22.5 percent of a team valued near $8.9 billion. His piece comes to about two billion dollars.

He is also the man whose name is on the stadium that opens tonight in Evanston. Northwestern plays Penn State at the new Ryan Field at 7 o’clock. It cost better than $850 million. His family gave $480 million of that. It was built with private money.

Set the two days side by side. Thursday he sits with the governor about a stadium for a team he owns better than a fifth of. Friday the lights come on at one his family paid for.

The Bears want from the state what they wanted in the spring, a deal on the property taxes for the 326 acres they own in Arlington Heights. That bill never got its vote.

The governor has said it is on the Bears to bring language that can pass the House and the Senate.

When was the last time anybody let you write your own tax bill?

The league put out a statement after the meeting. One sentence in it carried the weight. “Timely action is essential.”

Timely for who?

The Bears have a lease at Soldier Field through 2033, and the rent runs about $6.5 million a year. They own the Arlington land. Nobody is putting them out on the curb.

The calendar says more than the statement did. Election Day is November 3. The governor is on the ballot. So is every seat in the Illinois House. Lawmakers go back to Springfield on November 17, and the leaders want a deal in hand before they do.

A deal before November 17. A vote after November 3.

Who does that help?

Indiana put up a tax promise and as much as a billion dollars to bring this team to Hammond. Our call a week ago was that a bet on Hammond was a lottery ticket, years out of the money and going for pennies. On Thursday the commissioner was in Chicago, and the chairman who announced Hammond was not in the room.

Did anybody in Hammond get a phone call this week?

None of this was hidden. The guest list came in a press release and the papers printed it. The governor said he had “all the right players at the table.”

Two questions for anybody who pays property tax in Illinois.

If the one owner in the room has put up a stadium with private money, what is the tax break for?

If the lease runs seven more years, who needs this done by Thanksgiving?

Sources

The RulesThe RecordArchive