Losing made Bears the subject of the summer for ‘Hard Knocks’

Being a stranger to “Hard Knocks” is not a boast, nor is it a confession; it is just a fact. I blame the reluctance of the Bears to join in the summer cable show where, as I understand it, secrets are exposed and emotions are revealed, or maybe the other way around.

I have seen not one second of the NFL’s self-plugging series, thereby missing such dramatic issues as the return of Richie Incognito to Oakland and the Houston quarterback battle between Ryan Mallett and Brian Hoyer.

Nothing is more temporary than 15 minutes on HBO, but someone is always taking notes so it is easy to catch up. For another example, hard-hitting, hard-knocking journalism exposed the fact that Jets cornerback Antonio Cromartie could not name all nine of his children.

This is the sort of thing we have to look forward to now, a couple of decades into the thing, since the Bears have more or less allowed themselves to be Hard Knocked.

Let’s not avoid the reason the Bears are the subject of the summer. They are losers. Any team needs to be a loser to be on the show. It is in the rules. Yes, there are rules, three of them.

A team cannot be in the playoffs in the last two seasons, cannot have been Hard Knocked for 10 years and cannot have a new coach. The Bears slipped under the wire with the coach thing, but it is hard to find a more qualified bunch as far as being playoff shy is concerned.

In the 18 off and on years of picking losers, Hard Knocks teams have pretty much gone on to have seasons as expected, more losers than winners, neither cursed nor benefited by the experience.

In the case of the Bears, so long wisely aloof, this may be exactly the wrong year to join the fraternity of failures.

Putting the best face possible on it, CEO Kevin Warren gushed, by statement, the TV intrusion into Bears training camp will “provide our passionate fans across the world the ability to experience this unique and critical time in the history of our franchise.”

First of all, assuming the world is rife with passionate Bears fans is a bit self-deluding. Having been around the world myself, I can’t recall any conversation beginning, or ending, with, “How ‘bout them Bears?”

If I had to rank world sports conversations I have had concerning Chicago teams, the list would go something like this: (1) Bulls, with MJ, (2) MJ, (3) MJ (4) Cubs, with Sammy Sosa (5) White Sox, inevitably Black Sox (6) ’85 Bears (7) MJ.

On the other hand, to identify this as a “unique and critical time” for the Bears is half accurate as well as it is completely redundant. Bears’ time is always critical and never unique.

Here’s the same old story. The Bears are looking for a quarterback. They had one recently, or two, if you throw Mitch Trubisky into the same sack as Justin Fields, either of whom would have been fine fodder for Knocking Hard, since the Bears had engineered both as saviors, only to now be at it again with Caleb Williams, failure’s future.

Fields was a compelling story left to press briefings and midweek mumbles, so that what was known of him was his occasional brilliance and dependable disappointment on game day. Fields would have made good television, which is, by the way, not the Bears’ business.

Is Williams camera-ready? That is not the Bears’ business either. This is exactly the wrong time to find out. The poking and prodding of Williams will be an annoying distraction when what he really needs is the same distance that both Trubisky and Fields had.

At such a critical and unique time what the Bears do not need are unwelcome distractions. They already have to play an extra preseason game at the Hall of Fame and then travel midseason to London to play a game, supposedly for the clump of Bears fans camped in that corner of the world.

In all this, then, will be Williams, learning to be as good as advertised, as “generational” as touted, facing not only the usual hysteria of expectation, but the unkindness of camera-toting strangers. Well, as long as the world gets to see it all.