On the same day that Bears president/CEO Kevin Warren and chairman George McCaskey claimed they’d had “minimal” conversations recently with local lawmakers about a stadium funding plan, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell reportedly met with Illinois officials Thursday.
Politico reported Friday morning that he met with a “few select Illinois lawmakers” Thursday. The commissioner’s office declined comment.
It’s unlikely the commissioner would hold any sort of meeting, informal or not, without the Bears’ blessing. The team has continued to declare Hammond, Indiana, as the sole focus of its stadium site search — but the Bears still haven’t closed the door to staying in Illinois. That has kept at least slim hopes alive for them to try to work out a funding plan with local politicians, who are out of the legislative session.
Thursday, McCaskey made it sound like the NFL’s stadium committee, of which he’s a member, might need some convincing to allow the move across state lines.
“We think that, ultimately, they will become comfortable,” he said.
The Bears, meanwhile, are continuing their stadium slog, one that started more than five years ago and has yanked fans’ hopes around like a tug-of-war rope. The Bears have alternately declared sites on the Lakefront, in Arlington Heights and in Hammond, Ind., as their preferred site for a fixed-roof domed stadium. The Hammond plan is the only one that reached, and passed, a vote of the Bears’ vote of directors to move forward. When the Bears announced in June that their focus was shifting to Indiana, team officials told Illinois political leaders that they looked forward to continuing to work with them.
The Bears own 326 acres in Arlington Heights. They’ve pledged to put $2 billion toward a stadium in Hammond, where one site has been declared viable and the other is undergoing environmental and topographical testing.
Goodell, whose wife Jane went to Lake Forest High School and was raised a Bears fan, has toured sites in Hammond and Arlington Heights. He said in March that it was “really important that they come to a resolution on this relatively soon.”
