Football

Bears to open at home vs. Colts, play 5 games in prime time
Wed, 04/18/2012
Adding wide receiver Brandon Marshall to what was a .500 team has made the Chicago Bears popular. That is evident as they totaled the maximum number of prime-time games -- five -- when the NFL released the 2012 schedule Tuesday evening. Their first night game will be at Green Bay in Week 2 on Thursday, Sept. 13, as the league has...

Targets shifting quickly on Bears
Wed, 03/14/2012
he Bears ended the first day of free agency by securing a new wide receiver, a new quarterback, a new linebacker and an old cornerback. And best of all, they still have a nice wad of cash in their pockets. The...

McGrath: Bears Stay Within Comfort Zone
Sun, 02/05/2012
Remove the Heisman Trophy from the discussion and I don’t know if Phil Emery knows Robert Griffin III from Robert Goulet. I would assume he does; Emery has spent more than a decade traversing the country in search of N.F.L.-caliber players for three pro teams. But his eye for talent was hardly the focal point of a recent Halas Hall news conference...

McGrath: 20 Years of Sports Radio
Fri, 01/27/2012
Sports talk radio was a phenomenon fairly new to Chicago the first time I heard it here. I was visiting from California, taking my daughter to college on a trip that included a two-hour drive from Chicago. I came upon WSCR — “the Score” — while punching the buttons in a rental car and heard a boisterous guy later identified as Mike North...

A Small Step at DePaul
Mon, 01/09/2012
No conference has experienced more upheaval from the continuing realignment in college sports than the Big East, despite its unquestioned stature as a basketball kingpin. The iconic league that Dave Gavitt invented (and ESPN nurtured) to feed the fervor for college hoops in the populous Northeast Corridor will be unrecognizable in a year or so,...

Bears' Briggs: 'We're digging ourselves into a hole'
Tue, 10/11/2011
DETROIT -- The Bears were hoping to make some noise in the NFC North, not succumb to the excessive noise at Ford Field Monday Night. Nine false-start penalties, a few key dropped passes and big plays yielded by the defense left the Bears on the short end of a 24-13 decision to the Detroit Lions. The Bears fell to 2-3 and Detroit remained...

Fantasy Football: A Look at Week 5
Wed, 10/05/2011
We are one quarter of the way through the NFL season, and many of you have a pretty good gauge of where your fantasy football team stands. Some have laid the groundwork for prolonged success in their drafts, while others are hoping to capitalize on the waiver wire after a significant star goes down. These upcoming weeks can either solidify a...

Teachers Union Courts Aldermen
Mon, 10/03/2011
The Chicago Teachers Union’s closed-door “policy briefings” for aldermen Monday were as much about public relations as they were about school policy, Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s unofficial City Council floor leader, Ald. Patrick O’Connor (40th Ward) said after attending one of the three sessions. For weeks, the union and Emanuel have been locked in a war...

McGrath: Bears Rediscover Roots
Sun, 10/02/2011
So that’s what a running back looks like. The Bears were the home base for NFL immortals Red Grange, Gale Sayers and Walter Payton, and coach Lovie Smith has long summed up their offensive philosophy by insisting, “We get off the bus running.” But they had drifted away from that legacy in recent weeks, turning slick runner Matt Forte into a pass...

McGrath: Cutler is No Rodgers
Sun, 09/25/2011
Mike Martz can expect to spend another week in the center of the storm that is allegiance to the Chicago Bears. The pass-happy play-caller was roundly criticized for an offensive imbalance that took much of the blame for the Bears’ 31-13 drubbing by the New Orleans Saints last week. On Sunday it got worse. The Bears were more air-oriented than...