(670 The Score) January press conferences arrive like playoff games for teams that don't actually compete, and the Bears announcing major organizational change is a sad substitute for a Super Bowl. Such are big days when you're a loser.
It's a good thing for George McCaskey that there wasn't a scoreboard above him Monday, because he wouldn't want to know just how badly he got routed. The Bears chairman needed only a few minutes into his hour-long availability to set fire to any optimism generated by news of the morning, allowing for a total of around 270 minutes of warm feelings before reminding us why we're still so often confused and miserable on Sundays.
Those of us silly enough to think that the firings of coach Matt Nagy and general manager Ryan Pace heralded a new and smarter direction were only encouraged by seeing the team's official release devoid of other names on the virtual dais, hoping for a newly self-aware restructuring to bring the football side of the Bears' business up to industry standard.
But there was Ted Phillips, and there he is, still team president and still a key part of the search for this wave of replacements.
Here's Bill Polian in the role of Ernie Accorsi, the latest retired football guy to provide some borrowed glimmer of actual credibility in yet another desperate scramble for help.
And here we are, wondering why we expected it to change.
It was a slow and steady realization of fears, that a chance for progress would be wasted, that lessons from previous missteps would be ignored and that cloistered and parochial leadership still wouldn't seem to care that they don't even know what they don't know.
McCaskey and his merry band of do-gooders are about to plunge into something for which they remain comically ill-equipped -- and apparently proudly so to hear them talk about it. Though the new general manager will report directly to the chairman instead of the president, Phillips will be front and center in hiring for both that role and the coach, and he'll be in full charge of negotiating their employment contracts. So he remains in nominal football power on the masthead, no matter how the Bears want to pretend otherwise.
"I trust Ted implicitly," McCaskey said.
Backward business will continue, as they admit that the coach could be hired before the executive who would oversee him and the roster. When pressed on how this could possibly make sense to him, McCaskey was quick to drag out Polian's name as a rhetorical shield, hiding behind the former executive's long resume and 2014 book in the same way that the Bears have found cover before behind Accorsi or some corporate search firm, exposing their lack of meaningful connections or institutional knowledge actually befitting a franchise that clings so tightly to its heritage status.
McCaskey claimed that they were committed to developing Justin Fields at quarterback, only to then be forced into a non-admission that such a decision from their level can inherently limit their hiring options. He insisted he's "just a fan, not a football evaluator" while reiterating that after an effort to reach consensus, the decision on both open positions would ultimately be his alone.
And this was after he had opened the session with what came off as a pandering mention of the recent death of ESPN reporter Jeff Dickerson, one that he used merely to segue into chastising fans for heckling at Nagy's son's game. It was the wrong place and time and certainly the wrong method for such a message, evidence of McCaskey's continued obtuseness when speaking in public. But he wasn't finished.
Asked about former Bears center Olin Kreutz's recent revelation that his desire to assist with coaching offensive linemen resulted in a purposely unacceptable offer of $15 per hour, McCaskey essentially called him a liar, saying, "I've learned over the years to take just about anything Olin says with a grain of salt." That a righteously angry Kreutz responded shortly thereafter on 670 The Score was already beside the larger point, that the Bears chairman was dumb enough to pick a petty fight with a well-liked and highly visible former player -- one of their all-time greats -- and on the very day he's ostensibly trying to make a case for trust in his judgment.
The afternoon was another disaster for the leadership of the Bears, mirroring what happens most weeks to the football team that they keep trying in vain to aim in the right direction. An opportunity to project positivity, intelligence and forward thinking devolved instead into typical farce, more evidence of how lucky they'll have to be for anything to work this time around. It might, but it won't be due to them knowing what they're doing.
Any sane person figuring out if they want to work for the Bears should ask for even more money than previously planned.
It had better be worth it.
Dan Bernstein is the co-host of the Bernstein & Rahimi Show on middays from 9 a.m. until noon on 670 The Score. You can follow him on Twitter @Dan_Bernstein.