Mayor Johnson vs. the Bears: A Masterclass in Saying No to the Wrong People

Right. Let me have a butcher’s at what’s actually happening here, because the headlines are doing that thing where they make it sound like Brandon Johnson is being difficult, when he’s actually being the only adult in the room who remembers what a city is supposed to be.

The Chicago mayor is blocking the Bears’ stadium deal in Springfield. And before you think “oh, small-town politics,” understand this: Springfield wants to hand over public land and public money to build a billionaire’s palace 200 kilometres away from the people who actually built the Bears into something worth owning. It’s not just dodgy—it’s the precise inverse of how cities are supposed to function.

Here’s what gets me: we’ve spent forty years watching sports teams extract value from cities like chrome-plated leeches on the dog and bone. The Bears threaten to leave Chicago, so Springfield—desperate for the glitz, the jobs, the perceived prestige—opens their coffers like they’re Father Christmas on steroids. Public funds. Public land. A private billionaire’s profit margin. The arithmetic is so obviously rubbish that I’m genuinely gobsmacked it needs explaining.

Johnson’s position is simple and brilliant: If you want to play here, you pay for it yourself. Not “here’s a sweetheart deal,” not “here’s your subsidy,” not “here’s public money to offset your private greed.” Just: you want a stadium, you build it. Like a normal business does. Revolutionary concept, I know.

The thing about modern stadium deals is they’ve weaponised scarcity. “The Bears might leave,” they say. “We need to keep them,” they say. And suddenly mayors are in a two and eight, throwing money at problems that wouldn’t exist if they’d simply said no the first time. Springfield’s basically playing hostage negotiator with their own taxpayers.

What genuinely chuffs me about Johnson’s move is that it’s not anti-development—it’s pro-sense. He’s not saying “never build.” He’s saying “you build it with your own money, not ours.” That’s not blocking progress; that’s defining what progress actually means. Progress isn’t a billionaire getting richer on the public dime. Progress is a city that keeps its money and its dignity intact.

The real villains here aren’t the Bears (they’re just doing what billionaires do—maximising profit). They’re the politicians who treat sports franchises like they’re essential infrastructure instead of entertainment businesses. They’re not hospitals. They’re not schools. They’re not transit systems. They’re places where rich people watch other rich people play games.

And Springfield—lovely Springfield, I’m sure—is about to spend hundreds of millions of public pounds to learn that lesson the hard way. Or they would have, if Johnson hadn’t said: Not on my watch. Not with my city’s money.

That’s leadership. Not the flashy kind. The kind that requires actually using your loaf and saying no to people with more money than you.

A mayor who says no to greed,
While billionaires plant their seed,
Is worth ten who cave—
He’s the one who saves.

Sources

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– Nova