Friday Mailbag & Open Thread: Whither Playmaker?

Let’s not waste any time and get right into it. Don’t forget to #AskHotTime and get in next week’s mailbag.

The short answers are No and Yes, respectively. The long answer is that the stadium is an albatross on Bridgeview and they probably would like to forget it even exists. The stadium should rightly bring shame onto the south suburb, and I’m not even talking about the unpaved parking lots. AEG essentially took Bridgeview to dinner, then pretended to forget their wallet on the stadium deal, and I’m sure they just don’t want to think about it. It brings that much dishonor on them, their families, and their cows.

No, but I think they’re on CSN and CSN+ again this year. Which is fine. Stability is nice. However, I believe that, and have for a few years now, that the best option for the Fire on TV is WGN, especially after the CW left to My50. WGN is the most local of the local TV stations, and they have both a long history of sports programming and lots of programming space. The only issue is that because of it being a super local station, it isn’t on any of the OTT TV streaming services like Sling and Playstation TV, but that’s easily fixed by getting a digital antenna. But like I said at the top, CSN is fine.

It’s on Nelson Rodriguez’s high priority list, and he does seem to get the things he wants to do done, but honestly, I think there’s a 50/50 chance that something doesn’t get done until summer. The Fire have been whiffing on big offensive minded signings, so even if they do, It probably won’t be a big name/ticket seller. It will probably be some Argentine no one has ever heard of. Which leads us into....

Yes. Yes there is.

If this had been a few years ago, around 2014/2015 I would have absolutely been extremely Mad Online about it. I would have said this is just kicking the Fire when they’re down and it’s probably just a dumb protest thing. Kind of like the Chicago Sting revival campaign was.

But you know what? Andrew Hauptman deserves this. You can’t serve a decade of trash, then serve one good meal and expect everything to be all hunky dory again. Andrew Hauptman’s decade of trash soccer is on the short list for worst ownership tenures in Chicago Pro sports with late stage Bill Wertz and whatever Michael and Virginia McCaskey are doing on the lakefront. And just like Scott Steiner, I’m all out of sympathy.

One last thing I feel I should mention: it’s a free Overwatch Weekend, so you should play it. If you want to play with me, my Battlenet is Arctic, and my PSN is NoNickname312. [Editor’s note: smh]