By Janelle Towne, Opinion Contributor
The Chicago Bears didn’t leave because Indiana is a bigger market, and they certainly didn’t leave because Chicago stopped loving football.
They left because after years of trying to navigate Illinois politics, they reached a conclusion that more and more families, businesses, and employers have reached before them: the future simply looks brighter somewhere else.
What makes this story so revealing is that it isn’t really about football. It’s about leadership.
The Bears were prepared to invest billions of dollars into Illinois through a project that would have created jobs, generated economic activity, and anchored one of the most significant developments the region had seen in years.
Instead of finding partners in government eager to keep a historic franchise in its home state, they found themselves trapped in the same maze of bureaucracy, political maneuvering, and endless delays that have become synonymous with Illinois government.
Governor JB Pritzker’s response has been particularly telling. Rather than focusing on what Illinois lost, he chose to frame the debate around billionaires.
The irony, of course, is impossible to ignore. Pritzker himself is a billionaire, yet he wants Illinois residents to believe that another wealthy family investing billions of private dollars into the state was somehow the problem. Apparently billionaire wealth is perfectly acceptable when it sits in the Governor’s Mansion, but becomes dangerous when it’s creating jobs, building infrastructure, and expanding the tax base.
That kind of hypocrisy has become a defining feature of modern Illinois politics. The people running this state seem far more interested in attacking wealth than attracting investment.
They celebrate ideological victories while economic opportunities quietly cross state lines. Then they wonder why Illinois continues to lose residents, businesses, employers, and taxpayers to neighboring states that are actually competing for growth.
Which brings me to Rod Blagojevich.
For years, Illinois voters were told that Rod was the problem. Yet after nearly two decades of watching what came next, many people are beginning to ask a different question: if Rod was the problem, why did things keep getting worse after he was gone?
The same political establishment that targeted Rod remained firmly in control. The same machine kept operating. The same insiders kept calling the shots.
Mike Madigan’s influence dominated Illinois politics for years afterward. Barack Obama’s political allies rose through the ranks. JB Pritzker eventually took the Governor’s Mansion.
Yet despite all the promises that Illinois would be transformed once Rod was removed from the picture, taxpayers were rewarded with higher burdens, shrinking confidence, population loss, and a state that increasingly struggles to hold onto the very people and institutions it should be fighting to keep.
What Rod understood was that the government should be selling Illinois, not apologizing for it. He understood that economic development requires urgency, persuasion, and a willingness to fight for major opportunities.
He would have recognized immediately what was at stake with the Bears. He would have been on the phone. He would have been in the room. He would have been working every angle to make sure a Chicago institution stayed in Illinois.
Instead, under Pritzker and Brandon Johnson, Illinois managed to lose a franchise that has been part of Chicago’s identity for more than a century. The Bears looked at the landscape, looked at the leadership, and decided their future was somewhere else.
And perhaps that’s the real lesson here. Sometimes the people Illinois pushes away end up finding something bigger, something better, and something the state’s political class never saw coming. The Bears appear convinced that’s true for them.
As for Rod Blagojevich, let’s just say that while Illinois politicians are busy explaining why losing the Bears is somehow a victory, Rod’s phone seems to be ringing from a very different area code.
Stay tuned.
