Column: Forget Soldier Field. Move the Chicago Bears to Arlington International Racecourse and draft some horses!
News that the Chicago Bears put a bid in for a suburban horse track, possibly eyeing Arlington International Racecourse as a site for a new stadium, sent football fans into what NFL experts like myself call “a tizzy.”
Reactions on Twitter ranged from this: “What the (expletive) you guys I just moved here and Soldier Field is like 10 minutes from my apartment.”
To this: “Bears fans overreacting shut the (expletive) up, soldier field (expletive) sucks (expletive).”
That’s the kind of reasonable, carefully thought out analysis one expects in the online sports realm. Last I checked, the banter had not turned misogynistic, but I’m sure it will get there.
Now, of course, there are some nettlesome details. The bid is only a bid, not a done deal. And the Bears have a lease on Soldier Field that runs through 2033. But there is no room in online sports banter for details. The bottom line is this: A thing happened involving sports and it is crucial that every person who has ever seen a sport weigh in immediately.
Having seen a sport or two in my day, I immediately began forming what we in the NFL opinion-having business refer to as “a hot take.” A hot take is an idea you think is edgy and interesting, and everyone else thinks is stupid and annoying. If your hot take does not elicit at least a dozen death threats from people on Twitter with usernames like @BearFan543233 or @PoopHurlerNFL72, then it was not truly hot.
The first step in forming a hot take is hearing about something happening in sports and then ignoring any specific details relating to the news. The second step is forming a strong and controversial opinion while also suggesting something nobody else has suggested, even if it’s ridiculous and dumb.
For example, if you hear your favorite player has been arrested for driving his lawn mower into a neighbor’s pool, you don’t want to know anything about why it happened or how it happened. You just want to get angry at the neighbor for putting a pool in such a stupid place and not being smart enough to surround it with a lawnmower-proof pool fence.
Following this approach, I read just enough about the Bears putting in a bid for Arlington International Racecourse, which is currently owned by Churchill Downs, to know some of the keywords involved: Bears; Soldier Field; suburbs; racetrack; and horses.
Boy did those words make me mad. Sorry, I mean glad. They made me very glad, because I realized, based on my extremely limited knowledge of what was happening, that Soldier Field is a terrible place and the Bears should move as soon as possible to a new suburban stadium built on an old racetrack. And they should also draft some horses to play on the team.
Boom! Hot take formed.
Listen, it makes perfect sense. Expressing dislike for a historic stadium by the lake in Chicago will make a lot of people mad. I definitely want that, because people who are mad will express their rage by sharing my hot take online with a pithy, hateful message of their own like: “Can’t believe somebody paid this (expletive) to write this (expletive)!! #SoldierField4Life”
Now we’re cookin’.
The next step involves the horses. What do NFL teams value? Speed. What do horses have? Speed, and also majestic manes.
So if the Bears organization is buying a horse track, it would be nuts to not also buy the horses. (#RethinkTheNFL.) And if the team buys the horses, why not use them? I know they don’t have hands, but they’re doing amazing things with Velcro these days. And besides, my hot take doesn’t need to make sense. It just needs to exist.
So I’m anti-Soldier-Field, pro-Arlington-Heights, a huge advocate for adding new species to the NFL and I’m already envisioning sweet horse-themed Bears merchandise, like helmets with majestic faux-manes on them and T-shirts that say “Bear Down and Pony Up!”
The last question is: What do we do with Soldier Field once the new, state-of-the-art Chicago Bears PonyDome is up and ready to go? Simple, you jerk. (Sorry, because it’s a sports hot take, I’m forced to be rude to everyone to show that I’m a manly man.)
Soldier Field is where the horses go to graze when they’re not busy with practice or games of commercial shoots or sex scandals. People love horses, and sex scandals, so visitors can come sit in the stands, watch the horses and grab a $20 beer. It will allow Chicago to finally rake in the coveted equine tourist dollars.
I say go for it, Bears. Get those horses, get that track, build an outrageously large stadium, explain to people that Arlington Heights is actually a place and not the name of a condominium complex, make a fortune selling NFL horse jerseys and let the ponies run free at Soldier Field.
And if you need help cleaning up the horse poop, you can hire one of those bozos on Twitter who keeps threatening to kill me because of my hot takes. It’s clear they’re already used to shoveling it. BOOM! #SportsTalk #SickBurn #GoBears
