The Illinois legislature is playing beat the clock. But not for a new Bears stadium.
Via the Chicago Tribune, balancing the state’s budget has superseded the effort to reach an agreement that will entice the Bears to remain in Illinois.
Talks on a plan that would get the Bears to not accept an offer to build a new stadium in Hammond, Indiana, have taken a back seat to the effort to finalize a $55 billion budget. While discussions continue on a stadium deal, balancing the budget is the priority for the session that ends at midnight on May 31.
Absent an eleventh-hour resolution, the Bears will have only one viable option, for now. The question then will become whether Hammond is simply a bluff aimed at getting a deal that would finance a stadium in Arlington Heights, or whether the Bears will abandon the effort to stay in Illinois and cross the border to Indiana.
They wouldn’t be the first team to do it in recent months. After the Chiefs failed to get a deal to renovate Arrowhead Stadium, they struck a deal to build a new stadium not in Missouri, but in Kansas.
Fifty years ago, the Giants left New York for New Jersey. Eight years later, the Jets joined them at Giants Stadium and, more recently, MetLife Stadium.
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