Neil Hayes: Everybody else knows the offense must be fixed as the Bears prepare for a season-defining four-game stretch that begins with the Arizona Cardinals visiting Soldier Field on Sunday. Lovie Smith may be spending more time with the offense than he ever has, but it's Ron Turner who is most responsible.
Neil Hayes: The decision that will most impact the future of Notre Dame football will not be made by President John I. Jenkins, athletics director Jack Swarbrick, coach Charlie Weis or the small group of influential alumni who have served as behind-the-scenes power brokers in the not-so-distant past.
Tommie Harris made a play, which is newsworthy in itself. Well, he didn't really. He did but he didn't. It's hard to explain.
Laura Ricketts met a friend for lunch in Wrigleyville the same August day her family signed an agreement with Tribune Co. to purchase the Cubs. Her friend suggested they take a Wrigley Field tour to celebrate. They were sitting in the bleachers when the news reached another member of the tour via his BlackBerry. The deal was done, he announced. The Ricketts family had officially purchased the Cubs.
The end of the regular season and the surprising playoff series against the Celtics turned the Bulls into an NBA enigma.
What still nags about the Bears' 45-10 annihilation in Cincinnati is that they didn't compete. Not for one play. What's the point of staging an athletic competition when one team refuses to compete? It's like going to a play and the actors refuse to act. It's like attending a concert when the lead singer refuses to take the stage or picking up the latest book by your favorite author and discovering only blank pages.
CINCINNATI -- This was something nobody had ever seen before, making it like Secretariat's 31-length victory in the 1973 Belmont Stakes and Nadia Comaneci's perfect 10. Replace goose bumps with the gag reflex, and it was like witnessing Nolan Ryan's seventh no-hitter or Roger Bannister's sub-four-minute mile.
If Bears offensive coordinator Ron Turner finds himself in a third- or fourth-and-short situation during the game today against the Cincinnati Bengals, he should be thinking pass all the way. Air it out. Let it fly.
Now that Jay Cutler has been signed to a long-term contract that makes him the fifth-highest-paid player in the NFL behind Eli Manning, Peyton Manning, Philip Rivers and Tom Brady, the Bears have to re-evaluate the way they do business. They have to rethink their core values to ensure the franchise's new franchise player has everything he needs to be successful moving forward.
Neil Hayes: In a close game, chances are these Lovie Smith-coached Bears eventually will self-destruct. The Bears have yet to lose to an opponent this season but have beaten themselves twice.
Neil Hayes: Jay Cutler and the Bears' offense were brilliant and awful, efficient and ineffective, gutsy and self-defeating in a 21-14 loss to the Falcons in a game in which momentum swung back and forth like a windsock in a tornado.
Neil Hayes: Jimmy Clausen was ridiculed for arriving in a stretch Hummer at a news conference held at the College Football Hall of Fame to announce his intention to play for Notre Dame. No surprise there. It was a scenario straight out of the Public Relations Disaster Field Guide.
If the billboards that dot San Francisco are still somewhat disconcerting to longtime Bay Area residents, imagine how passers-by from Chicago must feel.
