A letter to fellow Bears fans

Fellow Bears fans,

By Dear Kevin Warren · 2026-01-21

Fellow Bears fans,

I've been thinking about how to write this for a while now. I'm not a columnist. I'm not a politician. I'm just someone who's been going to games my whole life, raised on stories about Butkus and Payton and the '85 defense, frozen half to death on countless December Sundays. Maybe you're the same.

So here's my pitch. One fan to another. About why I think we need to fight for Soldier Field.

Look, I get the frustrations

I know. Believe me, I know.

The bathrooms are bad. The concourses feel cramped. The 2003 renovation made the place look like someone dropped a spaceship into a Roman temple. Some of the sightlines are rough. The walk from the L involves crossing Lake Shore Drive like you're playing real-life Frogger.

I've heard all the complaints because I've made most of them myself.

And I know the arguments for a new stadium. Bigger capacity. Better amenities. A roof for when January comes and you can't feel your face anymore. The promise of Super Bowls and concerts and "world-class events."

I'm not writing to tell you those concerns are wrong. They're not.

I'm writing because I think there's something more important at stake. And I think a lot of us feel it, even if we haven't figured out how to say it yet.

What we'd be giving up

When my dad took me to my first game, we walked through Grant Park. I was maybe eight years old. The skyline was behind us, getting smaller. The lake smell hit before I could see the water. And then the colonnades appeared, those big stone columns, and I felt like I was walking into somewhere that mattered.

I didn't know anything about architecture or history. I just knew this wasn't a regular building. This was somewhere important.

Soldier Field opened in 1924 as a memorial to soldiers who died in World War I. It's been there for 100 years. JFK spoke there. Pope John Paul II said Mass for 350,000 people there. Championship fights, Olympic events, concerts that people still talk about decades later.

This isn't just where the Bears play. It's one of the places where Chicago gathers.

A new stadium in the suburbs won't have that. It can't. It'll be a building surrounded by parking lots, connected to highways, branded with whatever corporate name pays the most. It might be bigger. It might be shinier. But it won't be part of Chicago's lakefront.

That walk through Grant Park? Gone. The skyline rising behind the end zone? Replaced by a highway interchange. A century of history traded for a parking structure.

I'm not ready to make that deal for nicer bathrooms.

The cold matters

Here's the part where I lose some of you. But I have to say it.

I don't want a dome.

December at Soldier Field is brutal. The wind off the lake cuts through everything. Your hands go numb. Your face hurts. You swear you'll never come back, and then you come back.

That's not a bug. That's the feature.

Chicago earns everything. Nothing here comes easy. Not the winters, not the commutes, not the pizza that takes 45 minutes to cook. The city is hard. The people who stay are harder. That's our whole identity.

Bears football in the cold reflects that. You don't show up to a December game because it's comfortable. You show up because it matters. You earn the right to celebrate by freezing your way to it.

When Urlacher hoisted the Halas Trophy after the 2006 NFC Championship, snow was falling on his shoulders. Snow was falling on all of us. That moment couldn't happen in a dome. We'd earned it by standing there for hours, frozen, committed. The weather was part of the win.

Put a roof on it and you've turned Bears football into any other entertainment product. Something climate-controlled and comfortable that you forget the moment you walk out.

I don't watch Bears football to be comfortable. I watch it to feel something real.

The money game

The other thing we need to talk about is who pays for all this.

Kevin Warren and the McCaskeys want a new stadium. Fine. That's their prerogative. But they want us to pay for a big chunk of it. Taxpayer money going to billionaire owners so they can build a revenue-generating asset they'll profit from.

The research is overwhelming: public stadium subsidies don't pay off. The economic impact numbers teams throw around are fantasy. The jobs created are mostly low-wage and temporary. The promised development rarely materializes.

When someone asks you to give them a few billion dollars for a building that will make them richer, and in return they'll take away the building you already have that's been there for 100 years, on the lakefront, in the city you love... at what point do you say no?

I say no.

What I'm asking

I'm not asking you to pretend Soldier Field is perfect. It's not.

But think about what we'd lose. The place itself. The walk. The lake. The cold. The connection to everyone who came before us and froze in those same seats.

Be suspicious of promises too. Every city that's built a stadium for a team has been told the same things. Economic impact. Super Bowls. Events. And almost every time, the numbers don't add up. The reality never matches the pitch.

Some things are worth keeping even when they're imperfect. Character matters. History matters. Being part of something that stretches back 100 years is different from being a customer at a brand new entertainment complex.

We're the ones who matter

Here's the truth Kevin Warren doesn't want us to understand: we have power.

The Bears need us more than we need them. They can threaten to move to Arlington Heights or Indiana or wherever, but at the end of the day, the Chicago Bears without Chicago is just... the Bears. A brand without a home. A team playing in front of fans who showed up because they got relocated, not because of generations of loyalty.

If we make enough noise, if we make it clear that we don't accept the false choice between a dome in the suburbs and no team at all, if we demand that our politicians stop writing blank checks to billionaires, things can change.

They might renovate Soldier Field properly this time. They might invest in the lakefront infrastructure that should have been built decades ago. They might find a way to make it work that doesn't involve abandoning the stadium we grew up going to.

Or they might not. The McCaskeys might take their team and go. That would hurt. I won't pretend otherwise.

But I'd rather lose the Bears than lose Soldier Field and spend billions doing it. I'd rather lose the Bears than become the city that rolled over, gave away its lakefront, and subsidized a parking lot in the suburbs because a billionaire said "or else."

That's not who Chicago is. At least it's not who we should be.

One more thing

I think about my dad sometimes when I think about this fight. He took me to my first game. I've taken my kids. That continuity means something to me.

But you know what I've realized? The continuity isn't really about the Bears. It's about the place itself, the walk through the park, the feeling that you're somewhere that matters.

If the Bears move to a dome in the suburbs, I can still take my kids to Soldier Field. We can walk through the colonnades. We can look at the lake. We can remember what it was like.

We just won't be able to watch football there. And that's sad. But it's not the end of the world.

What I can't do is take my kids to a parking lot and explain why it matters. Because it won't. It'll just be a building. Generic. Interchangeable. Named after a bank.

Some things are worth fighting for. Soldier Field. The lakefront. The principle that public land should stay public.

Let the McCaskeys build wherever they want. Let Kevin Warren pitch his dome dreams. But let's make sure they don't do it with our money, on our land, by tearing down our history.

Let's keep the roof off.

Bear down,

A fellow fan