Positive Press

Today’s Positive Press is that The TODAY Show did a segment this morning about Robbie Gould and the Chicago Bears’ visit to Washington, IL earlier this month…and part of the story included interviews with my sons! I still can’t believe it.

I’d absolutely love to share the story but NFL restrictions are keeping that from happening right now. Will work on it and see what I can do 🙂

In the meantime if you missed it, here is the original blog I wrote the evening it happened: https://positivelysecond.wordpress.com/2013/12/04/a-goulden-opportunity/

I just want to give a shout-out to NBC for coming back to Washington and covering the story and keeping the community and its needs following last month’s tornado in the headlines. I’d also like to once again thank Robbie Gould and the Chicago Bears for putting smiles on people’s faces. They really made a positive impact on my sons and everyone they met while they were here!

 

A Goulden Opportunity

Yes, I did a spellcheck 🙂

Goulden…as in Chicago Bears kicker Robbie Gould who, along with a bunch of his teammates, paid a visit to Washington, IL today.

It wasn’t just a photo-op and leave visit, either. Gould and the guys spent the entire day here, first talking with Washington High School football players, then eating lunch with students there, and then walking through the tornado impacted neighborhoods.

I knew where they were going to be this afternoon so I arranged to pick up my sons from school, but I didn’t tell them why. After turning onto the street where they were and seeing Robbie, I let the cat out of the bag. The boys went crazy. They are huge Bears fans!

We stopped to talk with Erica who works with Robbie’s charity, The Goulden Touch. She gave me a sharpie, then pointed us in the direction of the players and we were off.

Deceptive Broadcasting Alert

Ayiee..

http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/football/bears/chi-fox-unsure-about-onair-apology-for-fake-cutler-headlines-20110922,0,2396909.story

From the article:

As a Tribune report detailed last Sunday, the Fox telecast flashed three ficticious headlines across the screen — “Cutler Leaves With Injury,” “Cutler Lacks Courage” and “Cutler’s No Leader” — that Fox color analyst Daryl Johnston described as “actual headlines from the local papers in Chicago.”

Dan Bell, Fox’s vice-president of communications, admitted to the Tribune that the headlines were “misleading.”

“Nobody tries to be more perfect than we do at Fox Sports,” Bell said. “And we are (embarrassed). We understand the mistake. We understand that we were wrong.”

Apology accepted of course. No one is perfect, nor will anyone ever be perfect. Take the spelling error of fictitious in the Chicago Tribune’s article above for example.  Sorry Trib folks had to do it.  Don’t feel bad though. I made three errors in this post before going back and correcting them, but I digress.

From Snore to Roar

Yet another roller coaster ride on the Bears Express has come to a very fitting jolt of an end.

Who knew that our players would secretly play the first three quarters for the Packers? Who knew that Caleb Hanie would put together a mayoral run-worthy performance in the fourth quarter? Who knew that Jay Cutler would have a rough game…oh wait, well I guess some could have seen that coming from a mile away but I digress.

This was a game that was truly hard for Bears faithful to watch for three quarters. I have never seen a more discouraging, listless, under achieving performance – and I’m a Cubs fan too. It was like a bad dream. Even our punter was horrible today.

Then the fourth quarter came around and all of a sudden the game did what our season did after the first half or so – it got a lot better. Caleb Hanie’s Facebook account is probably out of commission with all of the friend requests he must have received after his performance today. Unreal and most impressive.

Granted, we had played so badly that anything would have looked good at that point. But Hanie and the offense found a pulse and made it interesting. Meanwhile the defense held the mighty Packers offense to zero (yes that’s 0) points in the second half and made several big stops in the fourth quarter when we needed them.

I actually thought we might pull it off. Considering how poorly things had gone in the first three quarters, that’s saying something. To the Bears’ credit they made it interesting and coming within one play of sending that game to overtime, well, while it hurts it also feels pretty good knowing our team never gave up.

Say what you want about Cutler. If he was hurt so be it. If you want to place any blame Bear fans, I would look no further than the coaching staff.

Who on Earth decided that Todd Collins should set foot on that field? Have ya SEEN his stats, gentlemen? Terrible decision.

Meanwhile, the timeout right before the third down play on the final drive. Brutal. We were about to run the ball for at least a couple of yards and make it either fourth and one or get a first down. But, no. Lovie and the gang called a timeout like, nanoseconds before the snap – and then called a worse play which resulted in us losing a yard and that made it fourth down and at least a couple of yards more than it would have been if the original play had been allowed to take place.

Nevermind the fact that on the final play we elected to call a play that ended up with a throw downfield when we should have set something up for about five yards (you know, all we needed for a first down) but whatever. It’s over and all is forgiven as far as I’m concerned.

I will remember this season for the highs and the lows. We saw ’em both and to both extremes. My lasting impression though will be how a team that was DOA and for all intents and purposes done and appearing unworthy of playing in the NFC Championship game gutting it out, fighting until the end, and giving their fans one heck of a reason to cheer for them.

Bravo Bears. I didn’t expect you to get this far and my only request for today’s game was that you’d show up. You salvaged that in the fourth quarter and you left at least some hope for next year. Thanks for giving it a shot. Whether it was your best shot or not, well the analysts will spend the next few days/weeks/months wasting time worrying about that. You gave it a shot. And I, as a loyal fan, appreciate it.

Go Bears. See ya next year fellas.

Classy and Humble

That’s how I describe the post-game remarks made by Devin Hester of the Chicago Bears last night. Oh, go ahead and toss in ‘Refreshing’ as well.

You see, the guy had just broken the all-time record for kick-off/punt returns for touchdowns in the NFL. A pretty significant accomplishment. Not to mention the Bears had just wrapped up the NFC North division title.

A lot of times you hear athletes get up there and talk about themselves at times like that – both right off the bat and then throughout the time they have access to a microphone. This was much different and it was impressive to me.

First thing he did was praise God for all that he has been able to accomplish both on the football field and in his life. Second thing he did was give not some, but all of the credit to his teammates who blocked for him and enabled him to get free on all of those returns. Hester even broke down and had to pause because of the gratitude he had for all of this.

That’s classy. That’s humble. And if I do say so myself, it’s refreshing. So nice to see a superstar remove the credit from himself or herself and direct it elsewhere.

Congratulations Devin, on your well-deserved place in history. Keep up the good work.