Bears Braintrust Back At It

Now I’m not suggesting that the McCaskeys use the same photographer for their family portrait as the royal family does in “King Ralph,” but… fuuuuuuuuuuuu*k, are they terrible at running a football franchise. Even when not directly making decisions, their aura of idiocy runs through the team.

The latest snafu occurred on Monday, when running back Chester Taylor was under the impression that the team was releasing him after a conversation with Lovie Smith. His agent even went to Twitter to make the announcement — which turned out to be false. Taylor was not among the five players waived by the Bears on Monday, which included The Most Worthless Man of All-Time, Vernon Gholston (whom the Bears still owe $250,000).

Taylor will probably not be on the team by the time the season starts anyway, so this whole episode just adds a nice layer of awkwardness to the situation. Of course, that’s what the Bear organization has been known for under the McCaskey family’s stewardship.

In this year’s draft, they infamously agreed to a trade with the Ravens before forgetting to actually send the paperwork to the league, which forced Baltimore to forfeit its 26th overall pick to Kansas City and pick 27th instead. The Ravens are still mighty pissed about the whole affair since they were also supposed to get a fourth-round pick from the Bears in the agreed-upon but never consummated deal.

This is hardly the team’s first front-office fiasco, and we’re not even going to include their history of bringing in such stellar first-round draft picks as Cade McNown, Curtis Enis, David Terrell, Cedric Benson, Michael Haynes … er, wait, I wasn’t going to include that.

Anyway, the biggest disaster occurred back in 1999 when Michael McCaskey told everyone in the world that Dave McGinnis was being hired as the Bears’ new head coach. Everyone, that is, except for McGinnis. McGinnis, who was kind of hoping to have a contract, turned down the job after the ham-fisted move. McCaskey was bumped from team president to another spot in the team’s crowded front office shortly after that incident, but it is clear that the air of managerial incompetence surrounding the club has never left the room.

While the Rooney family sets a model for how a football team can successfully be run in a hereditary fashion, the McCaskeys have constantly proven quite the opposite. That the team manages to put together quality seasons like they did a year ago is no minor miracle.