My Friends,

 

Help me out here. I'm reading today that Brian Urlacher plans on skipping out on the Bears' mandatory minicamp at the end of the month in protest over his unresolved contract situation. Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't he sign the richest deal ever for a linebacker back in 2003? Doesn’t that deal run through 2011? What’s “unresolved” about his contract?

 

The terms he’s toiling under weren't originally a Scottie Pippen type bargain, with the Bears offering him a bit of cash up front but telling him it would be a mistake to accept it like Jerry Reinsdorf did when Scottie cried poor during his rookie deal. This was a bona fide you're the best, we love you, hope you stay here forever-type offer that Urlacher and his agent grabbed with both hands. It contained $19 million in guarantees and even included the use of a skybox for every home game, the one he promptly used to display Paris Hilton during a Monday night contest shortly after he signed.

 

Still, from what I've heard the Bears have seen fit to provide him an extra year at $9 million (which he'll probably never play for), an additional $1 million per season on the remaining years of his current deal, plus $5 million up front. Sounds to me like, for once, the Bears are being more than generous, making that kind of gesture to a guy coming off "minor" neck surgery with an arthritic back that isn't going to get better.

 

Urlacher is under contract, and there's no assurance he's even going to make it through 2008 with the way he slowed down last season, much less to the end of the offered extension in 2012. Yet when the subject of it costing him eight grand to miss the only three days he's required to work between January and July he had the audacity to tell us, “Yeah, it would bug me to get fined.”

 

Here’s a thought. Tell the whiny #54 that the deal is permanently off the table if he skips the minicamp, and let him honor the deal he signed half a decade ago. Then hit him up for the $8K just for spite. Let Mumbles and his handlers chew on that. Now that would really be one hell of a fine for not showing up.

 

And then put the money toward Devin Hester.

 

LBF

May 14, 2008