Seth Neal (dotCom)

I can remember when I sealed my “fan-ship” to the Chicago Bears. I was 10 and the Monsters of the Midway were doing the Superbowl Shuffle on their way to a glorious season. You can relive that glory right here:

Mind you, the Superbowl Shuffle was done before they won the Superbowl! Hellz ya. I was a Bears fan for life.

Little did I know at the time I was devoting myself to over 2 decades of debacle and misery. But, like any good fan, I stayed true to my team hoping for returned glory year after miserable year. The 2000s have been particuarly hard since the Bears have actually had talent on the team (as opposed to much of the 90s). Yet, we’ve only made it to the playoffs 3 times this past decade and only won any playoff games in 2006 when we made a Superbowl run.

That 2006 Superbowl lost convinced me that Rex Grossman could never be a winner in this league. You can’t play like a pro-bowler one game and like a JVer in the next and expect good things week end and week out. Lovie Smith though, stood by his quarterback, something I both respect and hate about Lovie. Long story short, we haven’t been back to the playoffs and we haven’t had a quarterback. Until 2009 that was.

The trade for Jay Cutler this off-season shook all Bears fans to their very core. This was the #$%^ing Chicago Bears. We don’t make blockbuster trades. That’s left to the Washington Redskins, Dallas Cowboys or Oakland Raiders… But, in March we did the unthinkable and traded for a very young probowl QB who was going to walk around on Lake Michigan when he wasn’t winning us every game we played.

I drank the cool aid. Lovie and Jerry showed me something that I didn’t think they had in them. And our 2009 season was the most disappointing season in memory. I don’t really have a point or moral here other than to say I hope the 2010s are better for the Chicago Bears than the 2000s were.

Bear Down, Chicago Bears. Bear Down.