Bearly Relevant: Franchise-altering trade edition!

In case you haven't checked out Stompy's take yet on the bestest trade ever, do so right now. This post will still be here when you come back. Promise.

Whenever something really awesome happens to me, I get this undying feeling of excitement in my chest. I like to imagine it looks something like this.


It has only happened a few times because of sports. When Hester ran back the opening kickoff of the Super Bowl, those back-to-back Mike Brown walkoff interception games in 2001....that's pretty much it as far as the Bears are concerned. Nearly every other time was during the White Sox' World Series run in 2005. 

The last time I felt this way was in May when the Bulls won the lottery. I was sitting at work talking to a friend on AIM who was feeding me the details while he was watching it live at home. The Bulls had only a 1.9 percent chance of getting the top pick, so when they won - or, excuse me, pwned - the lottery, I was in compete shock. There was no way I could ready myself for that news, news that would impact my life fairly substantially for the next 15 years, as silly as that sounds. You think the Bulls are frustrating now? Imagine them without Rose! And to think, he's here due to the most unlikely of circumstances. It's a bit much to comprehend.

The best thing that can happen in sports is when one of your teams wins a championship. That is, after all, why we spend so time watching games. But pulling off a huge trade, especially when it comes together so quickly like it did for the Bears on Thursday, has to be a close second. You prepare yourself when one of your teams is playing for a championship. Just like with the lotto, there's no way to do that for a trade.

The thing about winning a championship is that you feel like, as a fan, you earned it. When the Bulls won the lottery, though I was deliriously happy, I still thought it was kind of bullshit. The Bulls had been steadily piecing together wrong move after wrong move, and somehow a 1.9 percent chance paid off. Turns out all those boneheaded decisions were the best thing John Paxson could have ever done for the long-term future of the franchise. Like I wrote at the time, I initially felt dirty for having my favorite team land the pick that would turn into Derrick Rose. The Bulls messed up so many times before, I just didn't feel like they earned it.

Really, the Bulls winning the lottery is the closest thing I can compare yesterday's trade to. Only this time I feel like, as a lifelong die-hard Bears fan, I deserve this. For Rick Mirer, Jonathon Quinn, Shane Matthews, Kordell Stewart...all while the team's biggest rival has that asshole Favre running around, throwing touchdowns, smiling, having the time of his life. It was sickening, enough to make you question why you really like sports that much in the first place.

But now I feel like I finally have peace. The Bears have a real NFL quarterback. I never thought I'd see the day.

I got the news yesterday from a phone call from TTCS' own Eli Kaberon. In the next eight minutes, from 4:27 to 4:35, I got seven text messages. And they kept rolling in all evening long. They featured, on average, three to five exclamation marks. Two of them just read OMG. Yeah, this was big time.

I had ESPN on the rest of the evening until I left for class at 6:30, but it was on mute. I was watching all those talking heads discuss Cutler to the Bears, but wasn't listening to them. Instead I just sat there in disbelief, with this undying feeling of excitement trapped in my chest, blasting rock music oppressively loud.  

Honestly, I didn't really care what Mark Schlereth or John Clayton or Chris Mortenson had to say about the trade. Even when Ditka and Adewale Ogunleye were interviewed, I didn't bother to turn down the music and turn up the TV. I just needed to know that it happened. The news was good enough for me: the Bears are now the proud owners of Jay Cutler. Nothing those guys were saying mattered. 

The first thing I did after hanging up with Eli was call my father. He was at work so I paged him, and when he called me back and I told him the good news, he didn't believe me.

"No, no they didn't," he said. "It's probably an April Fools joke."

"Uh, Dad. It's April 2nd."

Thank God.