We've all spoken at length about the tendency of reporters to fill the preseason with empty conjecture and pointless speculation. I've done more than my fair share of mockery of exactly those things. But let's be honest: that's just the way it has to be. They can't not report on team happenings, but nothing really worth talking about is guaranteed to happen. So sometimes they have to dig pretty deep to even find something they can write an article about.
I'll mock them for doing it poorly, but I get it. You've gotta report on something, but there's nothing really to report on.
Then there's this. On Tuesday, as everyone in Illinois knows, we got our monthly test of the tornado siren system. I don't know if it's the same way in every state and I can't be bothered to look, but this is something that has happened in Illinois literally every first Tuesday of every month I've been alive.
Enter Tom Musick, a man who somehow wound up working under Hub Arkush. In terms of sportswriter career progression, this is pretty much the version of giving a defeated sigh and agreeing to do an Uwe Boll movie. I used to wonder how Hub even got these guys to come work for him, in fact I believe there is audio evidence of me wondering that exact thing in episode 11 of the SKOdcast.
But after today, I know exactly how. This piece is called "Siren Fails to Slow Down Bears." And it is literally the dumbest thing, Bears-related or otherwise, that I have ever read. In it, Musick marvels at the fact that a routine test of the state's tornado warning sirens did not cause the Bears practice to break down into a screaming orgy of confused violence.
I just... I don't even know where to begin. I'm sorry, Italics, but you must bear the burden of his words.
