The world, as you may have noticed, is going to hell in a handbasket. The news scrolls by like an unending parade of things we’re apparently supposed to process before breakfast. Every institution feels wobbly. Everyone is mad. Everything is expensive. And so, with apologies to the larger collapse of civilization, I’d like to talk about something nice.
The Chicago Bears have finally, blessedly, joyfully turned the tables on the Green Bay Packers.
This matters more than it should, which is to say it matters exactly the right amount. I say this as someone whose Bears fandom was forged early and cruelly. I was 11 years old in 1985, which is the precise age at which a sports team can permanently wire itself into your brain. The Bears weren’t just good; they were mythic. They were characters. They were refrigerators and headbands and defensive linemen who seemed to bend physics. That Super Bowl run felt warm, communal, inevitable. It felt like the natural order of things.
And then — well, then came the decades.
If you weren’t there, it’s hard to explain what it’s like to sit through year after year of mediocrity, incompetence, and the uniquely Chicago talent for inventing new ways to lose football games. Quarterbacks arrived and departed like seasonal allergies. Coaches spoke in clichés and left in disgrace. Every August brought hope; every November brought the familiar emotional shrug.
Through it all, we were told — by teams, leagues, and marketing departments — that real fans stick around. That leaving would make you a “fair weather fan,” that most contemptible of modern sports sins.
I’ve never bought that. “Fair weather fandom” is a concept invented by organizations that would very much like your money whether or not they bother to deliver a decent product.
Imagine a restaurant that stopped serving good food. Let’s say FatDuck, for example, quietly ruined its Reuben. The corned beef’s dry now. The kraut’s off. The bread tastes like regret. You go a few times, hoping it was a fluke. It isn’t. At some point, any sane person stops going. And yet sports fans are told that if we don’t keep showing up for a bad team, we’re disloyal. That it’s our moral obligation to keep eating the bad Reuben in the hope that someday, maybe, they’ll remember how to cook again.
No. That’s nonsense.
Loyalty cuts both ways. Fans invest time, money, and emotional energy. Teams, in return, should at least make a good-faith effort to win. For a very long time, the Bears did not. And fans were perfectly justified in being angry, sarcastic, exhausted, or occasionally absent.
Which is why this moment feels so sweet.
Because now — now — the Bears didn’t just beat the Packers. They handled them. They outplayed them. They broke something fundamental in that smug, cheese-scented sense of inevitability that has haunted this rivalry for years. Beating Green Bay once is nice. Doing it again a few weeks later is therapy. Knocking their smug butts out of the playoffs is spiritual healing.
This is the good stuff. This is why you stick around when it’s earned. This is why being a fan isn’t just about winning, but about the release that comes after enduring so much losing.
So yes, the world is on fire. Everything is terrible. But for a few glorious weeks, the Bears remembered who they are, Green Bay remembered who they aren’t, and the balance of the universe tilted — just slightly — back toward justice.
Sometimes, that’s enough.
