Mark Grote

I think it was a necessary move, to be honest, Mark, because listen, like George McCaskey told us at the owners meetings in March that they couldn't make a decision until there was a deal from either state on the table.

And at that point, they didn't have anything on the table.

They still don't.

If you look at the words of this morning's statement, it isn't that the Chicago Bears board of directors met and voted to build a stadium in Hammond, Indiana.

They voted to, quote unquote, advance our stadium development project in Indiana.

And so what they're doing there is, you know, continuing their exploration, understanding that nothing got done, not only in the spring legislative session, but in many past legislative sessions to advance their desired wishes inside of Arlington Heights, inside of Cook County.

And so look like everyone that thought that the Hammond play was,

was leverage when it was announced in december was right but it wasn't strictly leverage it was also a plan b which you need to have in order to produce any sort of movement anywhere and so now uh they are clearly marching down the path toward their plan b with an eye looking back over their shoulder as you just read in some of the comments you you just had from bill cunningham to say

Does anybody want to keep us here?

I mean, that's really what it is.

It's partially a pressure play, but also a move where it's like, if y'all aren't going to get your stuff in order, then we don't have really any choice at this point but to march across state lines and continue on exploring the project in Indiana.

Now, with that said, we can get into this in a minute.

There are probably two dozen...

really significant boxes that they'd have to check before we got to a point where we went out with the headline and said the Bears are definitely moving their home games to Indiana.

Well, and then, you know, like if this is a game of chicken, if you guys have ever played chicken, you've got to make your decision on when you want to get out of the game of chicken, right?

And like, and that's what kind of what's going to happen here with, you know, the state of Illinois and with, with people with the bears as they're trying to figure out what makes the most sense.

in this process.

Again, like there's not even a site selected for the stadium in Indiana for the Bears.

So like that's the next step is like identify the site where the stadium is going to go.

Now there's going to be environmental studies needed.