I watched last night's MNF game between the Bears and the Packers, two teams I really could care less about, but came away feeling bad for Bears' fans. That team is awful! The defense couldn't defend the run, the offensive line couldn't protect Kordell Stewart, Kordell seemed to be running plays the offensive coordinator wasn't calling, and the Bears in general just looked utterly inept.

It's a shame that the new, high-tech stadium, which architectural critics loathe but the fans in the stadium appeared to love, got more attention than the team, but it makes sense. My questions: how long is Dick Jauron going to last? How long is Kordell Stewart going to start? Will the Bears find a way to provide Brian Urlacher with some help in the linebacking ranks? Will fans revolt if the Bears, who have a tough schedule, keep losing?

Also, who is the MNF announcing idiot who doesn't know the difference between Brett Hull and his father Bobby Hull? Or that Hull was a star for many years for the ST. LOUIS BLUES? I wanted to reach through the screen and slap the cretin--Hull is a future Hall of Famer, for crying out loud!

Yep -- the Bears still suck!! I know just the tonic: beat the Vikes in December when those dome-dwellers visit to play in real football weather.

The new soldier does look like a terrific facility. Maybe it'll work out for them some year / decade ...

GO PACK!

I was surprised to hear that the stadium seats only around 60,000, same as it did before. I don't know the seat counts of every NFL stadium, but surely that must be near the lowest, which seems odd for Chicago which is - what - the third largest city in the country?

The new Soldier Field looks good on the inside, and I'm sure it's a much improved game-watching experience, but have you seen that ghastly thing from the outside? I don't know why they even bothered to keep any part of the old stadium instead of tearing it down and starting over. The new seats loom over the famous old columns reducing them to a mere curiosity instead of the stately edifice that they once were. It looks even worse in person than in pictures.

Fantomas....been missin' ya!

The idiot was Al Michaels! John Madden tried his best to save him without him being embarrassed.

Dick Jauron is gone after this season.

RE: Brett Hull

I am a blues fan here and I couldn't believe my ears. Yeah, what an f***cking moron. The best line was "hockey players wear helmets so you can't tell what they look like" what the f--ck? hasn't he noticed the helmets of the football players? then they pan back to Chelios and Hull and he says "hockey players are ugly anyway they have missing teeth" Some village somewhere is missing their idiot.

I'm sure everyone in Canada watching was like 'man Americans ARE stupid'

Here's the best(?) part: every year ABC adds Al Michaels to their Stanley Cup finals coverage!

I've seen it up close (from the lakefront walkway), and I agree. I still call it Close Encounters by Da Lake.

The old stadium's considered historic, and it's the most visible veterans' memorial in the area, so they had to keep the facade. Besides, one of "Baby Doc" Daley's favorite Stupid Developer Tricks is gutting a historic building but keeping the facade so they can say they didn't tear it down. They're even doing that with the (no, seriously, dude) long-closed park district garage on Halsted that's supposed to become the GLBT community center.

Back to Area 51 ... I'm sure the facilities inside are better, but they couldn't have been much worse than what they replaced. Soldier Field was built for track and field, with football (and, more recently, soccer) thrown in later as an afterthought (guess the Wrigleys got tired of cleats ripping up the outfield).

As for capacity, newer stadiums seem to be getting smaller (most notably in baseball -- think Miller Park). The main audience is on TV anyway, and the live fans that teams care about are the ones in the corporate luxury $uite$. That and the malls known as concourses are the real reasons for all these new stadiums.

I actually drove up to it and like the high-tech part, though the juxtaposition with the classical façade of the original Soldier's Field is bizarre. But post-game interviews of the spectators revealed that most really though the interior--the seating part, etc.--was really cool. Herbert Muschamp (is that his name?) babbled on about the stadium in yesterday's NY TIMES, reaching for profundities and ending up sounding just really annoying.

BTW, being in Chicago (now), I saw Kordell Stewart 's post-game interview. First, I think he's queer as a three-dollar bill. He tried to butch it up at first but then that whole façade (see above) fell away after a fashion. I wonder if he's still so anxious about his teammates knowing his score that he can't concentrate. I guess getting bodyslammed repeatedly sort of would make you think about that, as opposed to the closet door. The second thing I picked up is that he is probably going to try to get away from this sorry team as quickly as possible. He was trying to show conviction about winning, but he almost started criticizing the offensive coordinator, his line, etc. I think there's some bad stuff brewing among those Bears, and it could really get ugly by the end of the season. Because outside of Arizona, they're playing like they couldn't beat any of their opponents--by even a point.

The juxtaposition is what bugs me too. Modern and classical can be combined (as, for example, at the Louvre), but doing it well requires some sense of scale.

For example, if similar "innards" were built inside the shell, but lower, with the field sunken as at the Rose Bowl, the high-tech part wouldn't tower over the columns the way it does. But then Millennium Park gives us an idea of Da Mare's taste.