This is exactly why Chicago needs better sports media. The sportswriters currently in Chicago are so concerned with bitching about how crappy the teams are and finding any little thing to complain about that this poor average Bears fan actually thought that the Bears would not be as good this year as they were last year and now ends up losing $300,000 because they shut out the Packers. He describes the event as "beyond his wildest dreams." The poor guy probably reads the Sun-Times, which, according to Rahula Strohl, was recently rated by Sports Illustrated as the best source of Bears coverage in Chicago.

Seriously, though, what the hell was SI thinking? The Sun-Times columnists are terrible. Today, Mike Mulligan opens his column with this little series of questions concerning team pres. Ted Philips: "Hasn't the team president seen the Bears' 2006 schedule? Doesn't he recognize a juggernaut?" Maybe Mulligan should ask the same question of himself. All Ted would've had to do is read Mulligan's columns and some of the other Sun-Times' writers, during the preseason and he would have no choice but to come to the conclusion that at the beginning of Lovie's third season, the Bears are still a work in progress, with no idea whom to start at quarterback and not the slightest clue who their running back should be, not to mention that their supposedly great defense allowed the Niners and the Cards, two of the worst teams in the league, to rack up all kinds of points, so, you know, the Bears might be able to pull off a 9-7 season...

Of course, my personal favorite bit of preseason brilliance by Mulligan came when, on August 22, he wrote an entire column in which he castigated Benson for being a shitty teammate. This was in the middle of the Sun-Times' weird little campaign for Thomas Jones. Mulligan turned in a column eight days later pining for the ultimate team player: Terrell Owens.

And just to prove that not only are the Sun-Times columnists more concerned with their own egos and status as staunch contrarians to whatever might be happening to a sports team in Chicago, they apparently decided to go out and prove that they can be assholes about anything they want with this little gem concerning Steve Irwin's death.