Another Wednesday, another collection of Bears-related links from the wonderland known as the the World Wide Web.
- In their newest mock draft for The Athletic, Adam Jahns and Kevin Fishbain present a pivotal question facing the Bears on draft weekend: are Kellen Mond or Davis Mills likely targets after day one? (Mills seems to have shined as his Stanford pro day, per various reports. But if you can’t shine on your pro day, you’re literally just a terrible player.)
- Kyle Shanahan made news this week by deciding to attend the pro day of Mac Jones, not Justin Fields. This supports the widespread belief in league circles that the Niners are planning to select Jones third overall. So if you believe there are five first-round quarterbacks in this draft, the Bears are now down to two, Fields and Trey Lance.
- Really solid longish-form piece by Jeff Berckes at Windy City Gridiron, profiling the artist Jerry Keefe. Here’s a nice little passage:
“So, you know who George Halas is, right?”
Jerry Keefe’s son, also named Jerry, posed that question to me about five minutes into our first conversation. I happened to be staring at the bobblehead collection of Chicago Bears greats given out at home games for the 2019 season that sits on my desk. That collection includes the special Papa Bear bobblehead the Bears sent their season ticket holders, wearing his signature suit and fedora.
Yeah, I know George Halas.
“George was my Godfather.”
- ACTUAL BEAR NEWS, both from ABC.
- First, the story of the second oldest polar bear in America dying after outliving his life expectancy by almost a decade. His name was Little One and he was born at the Cleveland Zoo in 1989.
- Second, a book review. The book is called The Loneliest Polar Bear: A True Story of Survival and Peril on the Edge of a Warming World, by Kale Williams. The review is from Rob Merrill and his lede tells the story: “Nobody ever asked them if they wanted the job, but polar bears are the global symbols of climate change.”
- Dave Kindred is a sportswriting legend. 60 Minutes did a wonderful profile of his newest endeavor: covering high school girls hoops in central Illinois. (Thanks to my friend Rick Pearson for pointing me towards this piece.) He describes how he started this with perfect Kindred simplicity. “I went to a basketball game. And like the old war horse, I couldn’t sit there and not write about what I saw.”
Happy reading!
