NP: Rush, R30

Since I've lived in Chicago, I've seen nearly every professional sports team at least once. Except the Bears. For seventeen years, I've managed to avoid caring one whit about the biggest part of the Chicago sports landscape that there is. Sorry, MJ, but even with your six titles, this is still, fundamentally, a Bears town.

As I become slowly enamored with this year's edition of the Monsters of the Midway -- even if that nickname was originally coined for my alma mater -- it dawns on me that there's a good reason. Since 1988, the Bears have pretty much always sucked.

A few seasons ago, they flirted with success, driven largely by a weak schedule that was the result of the aforementioned sucking. This year, it's different. This team looks good, even to somebody who has largely given up on watching the commercials interspersed by occasional action. And they look good for that same reason that always seems to attract me to a team -- last year's Bulls being a prime example -- and that's defense. What caught my attention early on was, to no one's surprise, the math. The other teams were pretty consistently scoring only in multiples of three. I figured that couldn't keep up, but by and large, it has.

A little more of a look, and the amount of the Bears' offense coming from its defense also jumped off the page. Clearly, something is going on here.

It's still a slow road to respectability, as was the case with last year's Bulls. While the New York Times is noticing, stating with a journalistic flourish that, "in the last two games, the Bears' defense has 12 sacks, despite their opponents using every kind of protection scheme short of a tank to protect their quarterbacks," the filename of the story -- 28bucs.html -- betrays their skepticism.

Am I parking in front of the TV every Sunday to watch? Not quite yet. But I'm certainly much more aware of Soldier Field's "other" tenant -- now pretty much their only tenant barring some soccer doubleheaders -- than I was a couple of months ago.