Opinion: Keeping expectations low

Talk about it

Being a political operative and being a fan of the Chicago Bears are a lot alike, when you think about it.

In each case, one of the keys is making sure expectations are low enough to cause people to be astounded when you achieve a bit of success.

Political operatives know if they rent a giant hall for a public meeting, with a tiled flood the size of the deck of an aircraft carrier, the rally will look like a flop if 80 people in folding chairs are scattered around the room. If they rent the broom closet (I was going to say telephone booth, but who’d know what that was?) and squeeze 80 people in, with standing room only for 10 or 15 of those people, the rally might be described as one that drew a crowd so huge it overflowed the meeting room.

The less people are led to expect about a candidate and campaign, the more amazing it seems if things go better than expected.

That’s me with the Bears, one of the storied franchises of the National Football League. The Bears were in the NFL when it consisted of a handful of teams, back when George Halas, the “Papa Bear” owner and coach, wore a fedora, tie and overcoat on the sidelines, even in Chicago and Green Bay, even in December weather.

I became a Bears fan back in the 1950s sometime, around the time television was invented. A channel we received in Chamberlain showed the Bears nearly every Sunday. If you see the same team over and over, and if the announcers talk incessantly about how good the players are, you get hooked. That happened to me with the Bears because of guys like Rick Casares, Willie Galimore, Doug Atkins and Bill George, and later Dick Butkus, Gale Sayers and “Iron” Mike Ditka. Those guys were too cool for words, although they sometimes had trouble winning championships.

I think the team went from 1963, when they beat the New York Giants, until 1985 without winning it all. The Bears had another dry spell after ’85, making it to the Super Bowl in 2007 but coming out second. That one stung quite a bit, because Bears fans aren’t like the old Brooklyn Dodgers fans. We don’t often say, “Wait till next year.” We expect next year to be lousy.

Several years ago when a guy named David Volk was working in the Capitol building, we’d see each other in the hall once in a while and talk Bears football. During a particularly lousy period, Volk stopped me and said he’d studied the team and concluded there wasn’t a player at any level anywhere in the country who could turn the Bears into winners. The only option, Volk said, was to draft a journalism graduate and hope the scribe could spin things to make it look like the team was improving.

That’s what I mean by those low expectations. When the current NFL season opened, I figured the Bears had a shot at finishing ahead of Detroit. I figured we would be able to handle the Vikings, too. Other than that, though, I didn’t think Chicago would beat many other teams on the schedule. I was expecting a 5-11 or 6-10 season. A breakeven 8-and-8 would have been just fine. (“We filled the broom closet to overflowing.”)

So, the team figured out a way to win, like, 12 of its games and the division championship. That’s pretty astounding, when you think about it. My Bears are in the playoffs.

Am I excited? Well, yeah, I’m pretty happy, sure. I’m not getting my heart set on a trip to the Super Bowl, though. If we can just, you know, keep the score kind of close in our first playoff game, that will be plenty for me. I wouldn’t expect more than that. I’m a Bears fan.

Terry Woster’s columns are published Wednesdays and Saturdays in The Daily Republic.

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