If the Chicago Bears wind up playing football amid the oil refineries and smelting plants of northwest Indiana, consider it a fumble lost for the Bears and the state of Illinois.
But I wouldn’t be so sure Indiana has taken possession of the pride and joy of Illinois. Don’t put down your PSL payment for Superfund Stadium just yet.
On Thursday, the Indiana House Ways and Means Committee rubber-stamped an amended Senate Bill 27 to create the Northwest Indiana Stadium Authority and lure the Bears across state lines in their quixotic journey to find a new home.
In the committee meeting, which was long on speeches and short on debate, Indiana House Speaker Todd Huston outlined how the state would pay for its share of the stadium project, and no, the state’s budget surplus won’t just go to the team worth approximately $9 billion.
The Bears will chip in $2 billion, much like they would do in Illinois, and the state of Indiana will use public money from various bonds, taxes and tolls to pay for its share of the stadium and the necessary infrastructure improvements in the plot of land abutting Wolf Lake. With a few more votes and a couple of strokes of pen, the Bears could indeed be bound for the Hoosier State.
Apparently, the only bluffs in Indiana are at the Dunes, but even with the Indiana legislature chugging along, I still don’t see the Hammond Pros 2.0 happening.
In theory, the Bears moving into a stadium across state lines isn’t really that big of a deal. It happens in the NFL, and Hammond, Ind., where the project would be located, is around 20 miles south of Soldier Field. The Arlington Park site that the Bears bought three years ago is further away and is a significantly traffic-congested ride from the heart of the city.
Neither site has the view or the built-in energy of playing on the lakefront of Chicago. Both would be a downgrade in terms of vibes. Lake Michigan is a bit more scenic than Wolf Lake. But the Bears will gladly sacrifice outside aesthetics for a state-of-the-art stadium surrounded by a “mixed-use development” that will line their collective pockets.
And here’s where you should pay attention. This isn’t about a domed stadium. It’s about what surrounds it.
The days of surrounding a stadium with a moat of parking lots are over. Anyone who thinks this drawn-out process is just about a new stadium with a roof is way behind the economic times. And simply put, a mixed-use district in Hammond isn’t going to work as well as one would in Arlington Heights.
The area around the proposed stadium in Hammond just isn’t as promising as the 326-acre property in Arlington Heights. Forget about the scenery and even the environmental concerns in Indiana. The demographics don’t make sense if we’re following the money.
Hammond is part of Indiana’s Lake County, population about a half-million. The aggregate population of all the counties that make up Northwest Indiana is under 900,000.
By comparison, Arlington Heights is part of suburban Cook County, which has a population of around 2.5 million. Throw in Illinois’ mostly affluent Lake County, and that population bumps up to more than 3 million. There are more people and more people with money in the northwest suburbs of Illinois than in northwest Indiana.
Don’t think a new stadium will help the Bears on the field either. Look at the Dallas Cowboys, for example.
But an NFL team doesn’t need a new stadium to be profitable. For the owners to make big money, they need ancillary revenue. (The Indiana deal would allow the state to collect taxes around the stadium as part of a Professional Sports Development Area as part of its funding.)
That’s the play here. And that’s how a private business worth $9 billion can get public money, because it’s also promising economic growth. An NFL team plays only two handfuls of home games. There aren’t that many big concerts, wrestling events or soccer games to go around. Over the past few decades, pro sports teams have received public funding by promising to generate revenue for struggling downtowns. Now, the play is creating a zone of retail, housing and entertainment where the team is the landlord and business partner.
That’s why the Bears will, in my opinion, ultimately build a stadium on the land they bought for almost $200 million in Arlington Heights. The state will provide tax certainty and infrastructure improvements through gritted teeth, and the deal will get done.
Will it make fiscal sense for the public investment? Probably not, and I’m being generous by adding “probably.”
Still, if Illinois loses the Bears to Indiana, even if only on Sundays (plus the occasional Thursday and Monday night), it will be a black eye for the state in terms of appearance. Few rational people in Illinois want to hear about a private team getting public money, but in the same sense, they expect politicians to do their jobs and not lose the NFL’s charter franchise to Indiana.
It’s a fine line to walk.
If the Bears do leave, I’d blame the team just as much as the politicians. Remember, it was the Bears, who have a Soldier Field lease that runs until 2033, that started this story back in 2021 when they were complaining about not being able to put a sports-betting lounge at their stadium.
That led to them finally going through with a decades-old threat of moving to the suburbs. They signed a deal in the fall of 2021 to buy the Arlington Park property and have done nothing but tear down a racetrack and complain ever since.
Team president Kevin Warren was hired after the purchase and wasted a year flirting with the city about a new Soldier Field amid unresolved taxation and infrastructure issues in the suburbs. Two years ago, Warren spearheaded an ill-conceived news conference in which he promised a lot of bathrooms and made some empty promises about helping the city’s youth. A year later, he all but promised shovels would be in the ground in 2025. Then, this past season, he kept the distractions coming.
On Thursday, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker called out Warren, who was just at the Winter Olympics, for missing a meeting that the state felt was encouraging. If you’re into pointing fingers, aim at both sides.
Gov. Pritzker adds that Kevin Warren “chose not to be in that meeting” yesterday in which the team and state officials “mostly agreed on a bill.” The Bears, the governor said, told his staff today that their statement “was not some confirmation that they’re moving to Indiana.” pic.twitter.com/Hcjy5PYsgO
— Brenden Moore (@brendenmoore13) February 19, 2026
While Ben Johnson and Caleb Williams have uplifted the organization on the field, Warren’s stadium-building performance doesn’t engender the same kind of optimism. But this isn’t all on him.
It’s the McCaskey family’s fault the team is in this situation. The stadium issue should have been solved decades ago. George McCaskey, the team’s current chairman, wasn’t in charge when they put a spaceship on Soldier Field. Leaving the city will be difficult enough, but George “Papa Bear” Halas nearly did it 50 years ago. I doubt his namesake George McCaskey wants his legacy to be the guy who moves the team to another state.