Fifty Years and Counting

My father has had Bears season tickets since 1972, one year after the Bears moved into Soldier Field. Two sets of seats, two Saints games, and what gets passed down.

By Dear Kevin Warren · 2026-08-12

My father has had Bears season tickets since 1972.

The Bears had been at Soldier Field for exactly one season. Wrigley was finished, the team had just come down to the lakefront, and nobody knew yet whether the move would take. He bought in anyway. Fifty-four seasons and counting.

I want to make sure you understand what that means. He sat through the post-Halas wilderness. Through Payton's brilliance surrounded by mediocrity. Through Ditka and McMahon and the Shuffle, and the long disappointment that followed. Through Wannstedt and Jauron and the coaches whose names blur together now. Through Miller, Matthews, and McNown at quarterback, Grossman at quarterback, Cutler at quarterback and all the quarterbacks who also weren't good enough.

Two sets of seats in fifty-four years. Second-to-last row, northeast corner, from 1972 until the renovation. South end zone since. That's his whole biography as a fan in one line: the building changed shape around him, and he moved to the other end of it, and he kept showing up and staying until the end.

The Rain Game

October 3, 1999. Ditka was back in town, coaching the Saints of all things, and it rained all day. Not movie rain. Chicago October rain, the kind that gets in under whatever you're wearing and settles there.

I was 11. My father let me bring a friend, which at that age feels like being handed the keys to something. We were miserable. Everybody in the building was miserable. Nobody left.

Then, late in the fourth quarter, Shane Matthews found Curtis Conway in the end zone. And with nineteen seconds on the clock, he found him again. Bears 14, Saints 10. My favorite player scored twice in the final two minutes to beat Mike Ditka in the rain, and I was there, eleven years old, soaked through, watching optimism arrive in person.

Would I remember it if the sun had been out? My mother brought that game up every season for years to come, so maybe I never got the chance to forget. But I don't think that's what did it. The rain is why it stuck. We sat through three hours of miserable to get to two minutes of unforgettable, and that's the exchange rate. The people who stayed home dry that day have nothing to show for it.

The Snow Game

January 21, 2007. NFC Championship. The Saints again, eight years later. This time for a trip to the Super Bowl, this time in the snow.

I was there. My father was there. The cold was there.

You know what happened. Urlacher and the defense dominating an eventual Hall of Fame QB. Thomas Jones and the Bears running 46 times for 196 yards as the Saints stood on the sideline wishing they were back in their comfortable dome. And at the end, Urlacher hoisted the Halas Trophy, Virginia McCaskey beside him looking like everything she'd hoped for had finally arrived. And the snow was there.

My father cried. I cried 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. The wind could have cut through every layer I had until 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. It couldn't happen because the snow was what made it feel real and surreal at the same time. When Urlacher held up that trophy, it felt like Chicago itself was celebrating. Like the city had won something, not just the team. You can't manufacture that. It happened because the roof was off and the sky was open and Chicago's winter decided to show up at the perfect moment.

Still Counting

Last January I was there again, same south end zone, when Caleb Williams brought the Bears all the way back against the Packers in the playoffs. The building shook. People who broadcast football for a living said they had never felt it do that. And my father cried, and I cried again too.

Rain in 1999. Snow in 2007. Whatever that magic was in 2026. Fifty-four seasons in, the seats are still doing exactly what my father paid for in 1972.

Mike Ditka once said the two most wasted days of the week are yesterday and tomorrow. That's easy to say when your legacy will never die. The rest of us live in the past and the future at the same time, and I don't apologize for either one. The past is my father covered in snow walking into Soldier Field for a playoff game. The future is my kids in those seats.

What I Want for My Kids

I want my children to come to Soldier Field and experience what I did. I want them to feel human. I want them to feel the cold, the rain, the snow. I want them to earn their enjoyment, so that when it's 70 and beautiful in September and they get a little sunburnt on the backs of their south-end-zone necks, they appreciate that too.

I want them to get off the train and walk the lakefront path in the snow to a playoff game. And I want their eyes to well up someday watching the snow cover their dad's Bears stocking hat, the way mine did watching it cover his.

If we aren't human enough to think these moments matter, maybe we don't deserve outdoor football. Maybe we don't deserve football at all. If you can't take a slight wind across your cheek, why should the players strap up and risk their health to entertain you?

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 hand to my children, taken away. A tradition that started with a ticket my father bought sixteen years before I was born, ended on someone else's terms.

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

Except the numbers don't make sense. Not long term. Chicago is one of the greatest cities in the history of the world, with tourism numbers that embarrass almost every city on the planet. The dome pitch promises more events, but Chicago already gets the events, and the summer acts that want to play outdoors have plenty of places to do it. The calculation works for exactly one group of people: the owners.

Meanwhile, the thing broadcast money wants most right now is unique. The networks keep passing the same remakes and licenses back and forth, and what cuts through is whatever you can't get anywhere else. Bears football outdoors in a Chicago winter is exactly that, and it gets rarer every time another franchise seals itself into a box. Look at what people actually share: Justin Fields sliding through the rain, Caleb Williams winning in the snow. Same reason fans held on to the mud on Dick Butkus and the Fog Bowl. The weather is the brand. Embracing it isn't sentiment. It's the smarter business decision, and it gets smarter every year another team goes indoors.

I'm not naive about this. The Bears are a business. The McCaskeys don't owe anyone loyalty beyond what the market demands. Kevin Warren is doing what he's paid to do. But when he asks for billions in public money to build somewhere else, he should understand what he's asking us to trade: a place where my father handed something to me, and where I planned to hand it to my kids. A promise that some things stay put even as everything else changes.

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 of one family watching football on the lakefront.

It's worth more than a dome.