Fifty Years and Counting

My father has had Bears season tickets for over 50 years.

By Dear Kevin Warren · 2026-01-21

My father has had Bears season tickets for over 50 years.

I want to make sure you understand what that means. Fifty years. He sat through the post-Halas wilderness. Through Payton's brilliance surrounded by mediocrity. Through Ditka and McMahon and the shuffle. Through the disappointment that followed. Through Kramer and Wannstedt and Jauron and all the forgettable coaches whose names blur together now. Through Grossman at quarterback and Cutler at quarterback and all the quarterbacks who weren't quite good enough. Through the renovation that ruined the stadium's architecture and the administration that couldn't seem to get out of its own way.

Fifty years. Same seats. Same view. Same walk from the lot, watching the skyline appear behind the stadium like a promise the city keeps making.

What Gets Passed Down

The first Bears game I remember was cold. Of course it was cold. Every Bears game in my memory is cold because the cold is part of it. My father had given me hand warmers, and I remember thinking they were some kind of magic technology. Little packets that made heat from nothing. The Bears lost that day. I don't remember to whom, or by how much, or anything about the game itself. I remember the cold, and the hot chocolate, and my father's face when we walked out. He didn't look disappointed. He looked like someone who had done exactly what he meant to do.

That's when I started to understand what season tickets meant. It wasn't about winning, although winning was better than losing. It wasn't even really about football. It was about coming back. Week after week, year after year, cold or colder, wins and losses blurring into seasons blurring into decades. There's something stubborn about it. Something Chicagoan.

My father taught me that you don't abandon things when they're difficult. You don't leave because the product isn't perfect or the weather is bad or the team is losing. You stay. That's the whole point. Anyone can show up for the good times. What matters is whether you show up when it's hard.

The Snow Game

January 21, 2007. NFC Championship. Bears versus Saints.

I was there. My father was there. The snow was there.

You probably know what happened. Urlacher and the defense dominating. The Saints overwhelmed by the weather as much as the Bears. And at the end, Urlacher hoisting the Halas Trophy, snow falling around him, Virginia McCaskey at his side looking like everything she'd hoped for had finally arrived.

My father cried. I pretended not to notice, but I was crying too.

Here's what I remember: the snow fell on everyone equally. On Urlacher, on Virginia, on us, on the strangers next to us who weren't strangers anymore because we were all in it together. The cold was brutal, and nobody cared. The wind cut through every layer I was wearing, and I couldn't feel my feet, and I would have stood there another four hours if they'd asked.

That moment couldn't happen in a dome.

Not because domes can't host championship games. They obviously can. But the snow was part of what made it feel earned. We had been freezing for three hours. The players had been playing in conditions that made everything harder. When Urlacher held up that trophy with snow collecting on his shoulders, it felt like Chicago itself was celebrating. Like the city had won something, not just the team.

You can't manufacture that. You can't control it into existence. It happened because the roof was off and the sky was open and Chicago's winter decided to show up at the perfect moment.

What I'm Waiting For

I live in Chicago. I plan to stay in Chicago. I'm raising my family here because this is my city, and I believe in what cities can be when people commit to them instead of fleeing to somewhere easier.

I'm waiting to bring my kids to Soldier Field.

I want them to walk through Grant Park before the game. I want them to see the skyline. I want them to complain about the cold and then forget they were cold the moment something exciting happens. I want them to learn what my father taught me — that you come back, that you stay, that being somewhere difficult together is what creates meaning.

A dome in a suburb doesn't teach that lesson. It says discomfort should be optimized away. Parking lots and chain restaurants say convenience matters more than character. Climate control and retractable everything? Reality is something to manage, not experience.

I don't want my kids to learn those lessons.

The Real Question

Kevin Warren talks about "world-class facilities" and "the experience fans deserve." What he means is: a more profitable stadium with better premium seating and corporate hospitality options.

That's fine. He's a businessman. The McCaskeys want to maximize their asset value. I understand the economics.

But don't dress it up as something you're doing for fans. Don't pretend this is about Super Bowls that might happen once or twice in a lifetime, or events that would draw half-capacity crowds, or some imaginary calendar packed with entertainment we're not currently getting.

Be honest. Say: "We want a nicer box for our corporate partners to sit in. We want climate-controlled suites for our premium ticket holders. We want to optimize revenue from our 10 Sundays a year."

That's a legitimate business position. I disagree with it, but I respect honesty.

What I can't respect is the pretense that this is about what fans want or what Chicago deserves. Fans want the Bears to win. Chicago deserves honest dealing from the people asking for billions in public money.

What's At Stake

When I think about losing Soldier Field, I don't feel it as a business calculation. I feel it as a loss.

Something I was planning to share with my children, taken away. A tradition that started with my father's first ticket purchase, decades before I was born, ended on someone else's terms. A piece of Chicago's lakefront handed over to developers so they can build a parking lot in a suburb.

That's what makes me angry, when I let myself think about it. Not the economics, not the politics. The theft of something that was supposed to continue. The assumption that nothing lasts, nothing matters, everything can be optimized and relocated and disrupted if the numbers make sense.

Some things should last. Some things should matter. The cold, the walk, the view, the continuity with the past — these aren't inefficiencies to be solved. They're what makes showing up mean something.

Fifty More

My father started going to Bears games before I was born. Now I go with him. Someday, I'll go with my kids. And if we're lucky, they'll go with theirs.

That's a hundred years. A century of one family, in the same seats, watching football on the lakefront. Isn't that worth something?

I'm not naive about nostalgia. I know the Bears are a business. I know the McCaskeys don't owe anyone loyalty beyond what the market demands. I know Warren is doing what he's paid to do.

But when he asks for public money, when he says Chicago should invest billions to help him build somewhere else, he should understand what he's asking us to give up. Not just a stadium. Something my father gave me that I wanted to give my kids. A place where that handoff was supposed to happen. A promise that some things would stay put even as everything else changed.

My father will be gone someday. That's just how life works. But I wanted to take my kids to the same stadium where he took me. I wanted that continuity. I wanted them to walk the same walk and see the same view and feel the same cold and understand, without anyone having to explain it, that they were part of something older than themselves.

That's what's at stake. That's what Kevin Warren is asking Chicago to trade away.

It's worth more than a dome.