UNBEARABLE

 

               Once upon a time, in 1948, the Chicago Bears, my team, had quarterbacks named Luckman, Lujack and Layne. The most accomplished was the estimable Sid Luckman, who’d led the team to four National Football League championships in the decade, but Papa Bear, George Halas, knew that Luckman’s footballing days were numbered, so he looked to rookies Johnny Lujack and Bobby Layne to succeed him.

Lujack was a Heisman Trophy winner who’d gone to Notre Dame, which had (has) a big Windy City following. He was a handsome young man who threw a tight spiral. Layne threw wobbly passes and liked to stay out late partying. At the season’s end, Lujack got the nod and Layne was traded away.

At first the judgement seemed correct. Lujack took over as the team’s starter in 1949 and had the job all to himself after Luckman retired in 1950, playing well that year and the next. Then he quit to coach and, soon afterward, join his father-in-law’s Chevy dealership in Davenport, Iowa. Layne liked football just fine, winning three titles with the Detroit Lions and having a 16-season, Hall of Fame career.

That little recitation came to mind last week when the online Chicago Tribune ran a photo-gallery display of the Bears’ quarterbacks since 1950. Sixty six men were pictured along with a paragraph naming 15 more whose photos weren’t available.  It was a sad display because the team hasn’t had an outstanding quarterback—or a truly first-rate passing game-- since Ol’ Sid’s day. That’s 70 years if you’re scoring, a period in which the erstwhile Monsters of the Midway have won exactly two NFL titles, in 1963 and ‘85. If it weren’t for Chicago’s baseball reps, the Cubs and White Sox, it’s a record of ineptitude that would attract more notoriety than it has.

               Making the wound more painful is that the Bears’ QB failings stand in sharp contrast to the record of their archrival, the Green Bay Packers. There three stellar quarterbacks-- Bart Starr, Brett Favre and Aaron Rodgers—shined at the position while the Bears’ revolving door whirled, bringing glory to the self-but-appropriately-named Titletown.  Rodgers still is going strong at age 37, twice a year reminding Chicagoans what they miss. Life is cruel.

               I fancy myself an attentive fan but some of the names in the Tribune’s QB list were unfamiliar to me. Does anyone recall Rusty Lisch, Mike Hohensee, Steve Stenstrom, Henry Burris or Will Furrer? I don’t, and it’s probably just as well.

               The lineup revealed some interesting but little-known Bear facts. Probably the best-named quarterback ever, Willie Thrower, was a 1953 Bear. He played in just one game but still is counted as a black pioneer at the position. The team’s 1987 roster included two QBS who would go on to become notable coaches—Jim Harbaugh and Sean Payton. It had a McNown at the position, Cade in 1999, and a McCown, Josh, in 2011-13. Cade was a first-round bust out of UCLA, Josh is a career backup who is still at it at age 41.

               Some of the QBs, while falling well short of H of F status, had things to recommend them. Foremost, I guess, was Jay Cutler (2009-16). He broke most of Luckman’s team passing records, but mostly because of changes in the game; Cutler threw 3,271 passes in his eight seasons in Chicago while Luckman threw 1,744 in his 12 (1939-50). Cutler was talented but maddeningly erratic, capable of threading the needle on one play while missing the whole sewing box the next.  His exit was mourned by few.

               Jim McMahon (1982-88) capably quarterbacked the 1985 Bears Super Bowl victors, as did Billy Wade (1961-66) for the 1963 champs, but both teams were distinguished mainly by their defenses. Both were dogged by injuries before and after their big years. McMahon never started a full, 16-game slate in Chicago. George Blanda (1949-58) had a Hall of Fame career as a passer and placekicker but had his best years with the Houston Oilers and Oakland Raiders, not the Bears.

               Erik Kramer, Rudy Bukich and Ed Brown all had a good season or two during their briefish tenures. Bobby Douglass (1969-75), a Lil’ Abner type, was a better runner than passer; his 968 yards rushing in 1972 stood as an NFL quarterback record until Michael Vick broke it in 2006.

               Except for those guys the picture is dark. Rex Grossman quarterbacked the Bears’ 2005 Super Bowl team but that group succeeded in spite of rather than because of him and was soundly beaten in the big game despite scoring a touchdown on an opening kickoff runback. His signature play was the fumbled center snap.

 Jack Concannon (1967-71) lives on because of, maybe, the all-time goofiest NFL play. Under center in a 1969 game against the St. Louis Cardinals Concannon turned to the referee and called for a timeout but his center made the snap on first sound, as instructed. The ball bounced off Concannon’s hip into the air from where Cardinal linebacker Larry Stallings grabbed it and ran 62 yards for a TD. I saw it on TV and still don’t believe it.

   Perhaps the saddest story of all concerns the present incumbent, Mitch Trubisky. Big and strongarmed, but with only one season as a college starter (at North Carolina), Trubisky so transfixed Bear decision markers that they traded their No. 3 draft pick, two third-rounders and a fourth-rounder to move up a single spot in the 2017 draft and make him the second player picked that year, ahead of Patrick Mahomes and Deshaun Watson, for heaven’s sake. Trubisky is not without ability but in his fourth season still looks like a rookie, throwing into crowds, not seeing open receivers and requiring trimmed-back game plans.

 The Bears sought an alternative to Trubisky in the off-season by signing the veteran Nick Foles. As a backup he’d led the Philadelphia Eagles to the 2017 title, but lifting the mediocre Bears seems beyond him, so future travail looms.  Maybe after all these years the Bears could get lucky with a high-round draft choice like Tom Brady, or minor-league refugee like Kurt Warner.

  It could happen, couldn’t it?

 Probably not.

              

              

HORSE SENSE

 

               Two entities that rank at or near the bottom of their classes in just about every measure of public approval—the U.S. Congress (politics) and thoroughbred horse racing (sports)--  are getting together to do something that ought to improve the odors of both. Any day now Congress is expected to approve the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act, aimed at curing many of the governing defects that have plagued the sport.

               The act would create national standards for such things as track safety and maintenance, injury-data collection and disciplinary processes and sanctions, and put them under the control of an authority overseen by the Federal Trade Commission. More importantly, it would place drug testing and administration in the hands of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA), an independent body utilized by many sports.

               The action would replace in large part the hodgepodge of state agencies that govern (or misgovern) thoroughbred racing in the states that permit it. There are 38 of those bodies and they vary widely in competence and honesty. What is banned in one state might be permitted in another, making a shambles of rule enforcement. They’ve been sustained by raw politics—states have been loathe to give up any part of the patronage, perks and power the current system provides.

 The state boards and commissions won’t go away; they’ll still oversee many daily racetrack operations. And they’ll still run things for a while because for some reason the act won’t take effect until 2022. But after that issues that cut across state lines will be decided by a nine-member national authority, five of whose members must be free of ties to the sport.

In a show of nonpartisanship rare in Washington these days, the measure passed the U.S. House by voice vote in September and was sent along to the Senate. There it has quite a few named sponsors including the Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell from the racing mecca of Kentucky, without whose support nothing moves in that body. Approval is expected to come before the January change of administrations. President Trump’s signature is said to be about as sure as anything is with him.

Behind the act are years of malfeasance that have made the sport a synonym for corruption just about everywhere it operates, sustained because of the jobs it provides (about one million nationally) and the state tax money it produces.  If anything, its stink has only increased in recent years, fueled by doping scandals that seem to grow ever larger and more complex.

Last March 27 horse trainers, veterinarians, pharmacists and other track employees were indicted after a wide-ranging FBI investigation into performance-enhancing drug use-allegedly affecting dozens of horses that ran on the New Jersey race tracks. Among the group was the well-known trainer Jason Servis, whose colt Maximum Security won the 2019 Kentucky Derby before being disqualified for cutting off other horses in the race’s homestretch run. He and the other defendants have pleaded not guilty. No trial date has been set.

Doping suspicions have trailed other leading trainers, including Bob Baffert, long the sport’s shining star. He has saddled six Kentucky Derby winners and two winners of the elusive Triple Crown for three-year-olds, American Pharoah in 2015 and Justify in 2018.  Twenty nine of his horses have failed drug tests over the past 40 years including four in the last six months. One of those animals was Gamine, the winner of a million-dollar Breeders Cup race three weeks ago.

Reporting by the excellent Joe Drape of the New York Times, one of the few newspapers that cover the sport beyond small-print lists of entries and results, revealed that Justify failed a drugs test after winning the 2018 Santa Anita Derby. This might have made the colt ineligible for the later Triple Crown races, but the California Racing Board, whose chairman had ties to Baffert, stretched its inquiry into the matter over four months, long enough to allow the animal to compete in the series and win. In a closed-door ruling the board eventually attributed the test failure to “environmental contamination,” letting Baffert off the hook. The trainer’s previous infractions have been dealt with similarly, with fines or brief suspensions being the harshest penalties. Most other trainers so apprehended also have received such treatment. 

Really¸ though, the hay bale that broke the holdouts’ backs was the death of 30 horses from training or racing mishaps during the Santa Anita winter meeting of 2018-19. That roused not only the sport’s usual animal-rights critics but also the public at large.  Along with its bureaucratic name, the act now pending in Washington ought to include an “in memoriam” reference to the Santa Anita fallen.

Congress’s willingness to protect equine lives stands in contrast to its unwillingness to do the same for some human athletes, namely boxers. It did pass the Muhammad Ali Boxing Reform Act of 2000, which set national guidelines for medical matters in the sport, fighter-manager contracts and divisional ratings systems, but left enforcement in the hands of the state commissions, some of  whose bumbling helped create the need for such legislation. Boxing’s lack of proper governance mirrors that of horse racing and calls for the same remedy.

 Sen. John McCain led the push for the Ali Act and his death in 2018 left a boxing-advocacy void in Washington. Someone should step up to fill it, and the sooner the better.