Dan Wiederer

And has, you know, obviously quite a bit of land to deal with.

So, you know, I don't know which way this thing's going to twist and turn in the long run.

Hopefully that gives you some context on kind of where my viewpoint is on it.

But it's a saga that's just seemingly been never ending with not a lot of momentum.

The jig is up.

That's the first and the biggest misstep in this entire project, was doing that without full-fledged clarity on what was going to occur there.

look i know george was you know candid and saying look like it was up for sale and we had to act well did you because again who was the competition for that and at that point you're making a decision that it's arlington heights or bust right because you could have let someone else buy that property and there was no pressure in that moment it's not like they were coming up on the end of their lease at soldier field and they had to have a future stadium property in their hand and in their back pocket by the time the the summer of 2021 ended and so

when you made that move i think internally they just they left a lot of boxes unchecked in terms of what needed to be done to bring that that property to life in the way that it needs to come to life for a stadium and a multi-use district and everything else that comes with it i'm curious dan what your biggest takeaway was from ben johnson's time with the media because he said a lot of stuff about a lot of different things but what resonated the most with you

I'll give you a small picture one first and then a big picture one.

And the small picture one is even folks that don't cover the Bears on a regular basis that listen to Ben talk realize just how much substance is in every single thing he says.

And it's kind of refreshing for people around the league that kind of wander over from teams that have coaches that just kind of speak in coach speak and don't give you a lot there.

Every single answer that Ben gives,

gives to a question.

One, it's engaged and two, it's informative.

And so you learn a lot about his mindset, about the direction of the team, about the vision.

That part is really cool as somebody that covers a team on a regular basis to be part of that sort of back and forth and that exchange.

I think there's also an acknowledgement from Ben that like,

There is a lot of work ahead.

They want to be a team that is consistently in championship contention from now into the 2030s, right?

And in order to do that, you can't celebrate.