The Bears won’t accept cash at Soldier Field, starting with Sunday’s season opener against the 49ers.

Fans must use a credit or debit card or mobile payment for their purchases, including roaming vendors, the team said in a release Thursday. Those who do not own such payment methods will be able to exchange cash for a pre-paid Visa Card at at the Bears’ ticket office at Gate 8 or at the pro shops near Gate 0, the “water wall” and the Club 100 levels.

In a statement Thursday, the Bears claimed that making Soldier Field cash-free increased safety, reduced touch points and improved convenience for fans by shortening lines and wait times.

Soldier Field is the last major Chicago sports venue to go cashless. Wrigley Field, Guaranteed Rate Field and the United Center have been cashless this season, a vestige of coronavirus protocols that likely won’t go away.

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A shot clock is coming to Illinois high school basketball sooner than expected.

The Illinois High School Association recently announced that it would allow the “experimental use” of a shot clock in girls and boys basketball at regular-season tournaments and shootouts.

The events must apply for approval from the IHSA.

“The IHSA’s survey of administrators and coaches last year made it very clear that our membership wasn’t ready to implement the shot clock in basketball at this juncture,” IHSA Executive Director Craig Anderson said. “Our priority now shifts to gathering feedback and data on the impact that the shot clock creates on game play, game management, and school finances. We look forward to working with our schools to pilot usage of the shot clock in some tournaments and shootouts this winter. We will release information to our schools on how to apply to use the shot clock in their tournament or shootout in mid-September.”

There’s been a lot of excitement around the news, but not enough attention paid to the first part of Anderson’s statement. It appears the state may be several years away from requiring a shot clock at all games. The IHSA is driven by its member schools and they made it “very clear” they aren’t ready to implement a shot clock.

Expect to see the 35-second shot clock popping up at several, if not most, tournaments and shootouts this season.

Goodbye to the three-point showdown

The IHSA also announced that it was ending the long-running three-point showdown. The competition was well-liked and generally didn’t get in the way of or delay state playoff games.

It was a problem at the state finals, however. Scheduling the three-point showdown around the games limited the IHSA’s ability to provide the best experience for fans that were in Peoria or Champaign to watch basketball.

It’s possible the three-point showdown could return in some way once the IHSA settles on a schedule for the three-day state finals format that debuted successfully last season. But it is gone for now while things get figured out.

It’s a good sign that the IHSA is taking proactive measures to nail down the best possible schedule for the state finals. The move to Champaign and the three-day format was a success last year and a few tweaks could improve the experience for fans.

CPS progress

Determining when and where Chicago Public Schools sporting events take place has been a monumental task for the past several decades. The dates and times published in the paper took hours and many phone calls to establish…and were still often undependable.

That may be changing. CPS quietly launched a new athletics website last year, www.cpsathletics.org. It fully rolled out this season and appears quite comprehensive.

A check of my local high school, Clemente, shows times and locations for soccer, volleyball and football games this week.

Thompson out at Leo

Brother Rice isn’t the only Catholic League school that has been forced to make a coaching change during the school year.

Jamal Thompson stepped down as basketball coach at Leo this week. Thompson, a Leo grad, was 76-27 in four years with the Lions.

Leo is expected to fill the vacancy with a coach already involved in the program.

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The Chicago Bears offensive line is finishing its complete rebuild and coming together for a massive week one test against one of the best defensive lines in the NFL.

Braxton Jones, Larry Borom, and Teven Jenkins are all second-year and first-year players with 10 total NFL starts.  Three players with 10 starts don’t exactly elicit confidence heading into week one of the NFL season.

The question remains will the Chicago Bears’ offensive tackles be able to hold up against a deep and talented defensive end core?  The 49ers go about five deep with Samson Ebukam, Drake Jackson, Charles Omenihu, Kerry Hyder, and Kemoko Turay.  

The 49ers were fifth in the league in total sacks and first in the league against the run and seventh overall in defense according to Football Outsiders.  So the Bears will have a huge challenge ahead of them to get their offense moving.  The 49ers will be competing for a Super Bowl title based on the talent they have on defense.  The defense can very well carry them to the Super Bowl, much like it has carried them to the playoffs the last few years.

The Chicago Bears meanwhile will start two fifth-round draft picks in Braxton Jones and Larry Borom.  Jone has shown a ton of potential, while Borom is a good run blocker but sizes up as a below-average pass blocker.

How bad will it get for the Bears in week one?  That seems to be the over-arcing theme because there is little confidence that the Chicago Bears will get much going on offense.  The bettors have the Bears scoring 15 points in the game, basically 7.5-points per half.  That’s among the lowest week one totals to bet on to start the season.

All that being said, this is a different Bears team than a year ago with a completely revamped offensive scheme.  The Bears will attack the edges with their outsize zone running scheme which will put immediate pressure on the defenders and take pressure off of Justin Fields.

The Bears showed a willingness to use Justin Fields in the RPO game which means a team will show run, but then immediately throw a pass out of a run blocking set.  That means the defensive ends can’t sit in a pass-rushing stance like they did so many times a year ago in the Matt Nagy scheme.

Even when Nagy wasn’t passing the ball, he was running the ball primarily out of the shotgun which still meant the defense could pin their ears back and attack the mesh point in ways they can’t when you run out of the I-formation.

Second, the Bears will run a lot more play-action passes than they did a year ago which also means the defensive ends will have completely different responsibilities than they did a year ago. The Bears have also shown that they’ll be far more active in the screen game than they were a year ago, getting WRs involved in the screen game as well as TEs to slow down the pass rush.

Lastly, there will be far more movement in the pocket with Justin Fields than there was a year ago.  The Bears ran 15 designed rollouts a year ago, that;’s less than one per game which meant the defense could plan on rushing to a landmark on passing downs to disrupt the Bears’ offense.  They did that well a year ago as the Bears had the highest sack rate allowed of any team in the NFL a year ago.

So yes the Bears will be facing a monumental test, but offensive coordinator Luke Getsy is going to scheme the protections and the offense in a completely different way than Matt Nagy.  Despite the inexperience up front, the Bears will likely protect the passer better than they did a year ago.

There just isn’t a way to truly express in the ineptititue of the Matt Nagy offense and how it was designed to fail and how it was essentially an Arena Football offense, which is where  Nagy had his most success as a player.  There wasn’t any NFL aspects to Nagy’s scheme, and the elimination of that means the Bears will have a better chance than a year ago.

So a brand new offense with scheme versatility will put the Bears in a better position to compete.  The difference may come down to just how special of a player Justin Fields.  If the Bears pull out the improbable win because of Justin Fields, then the future is brighter than it has ever been in the history of franchise.

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The Chicago Bears offensive line is finishing its complete rebuild and coming together for a massive week one test against one of the best defensive lines in the NFL.

Braxton Jones, Larry Borom, and Teven Jenkins are all second-year and first-year players with 10 total NFL starts.  Three players with 10 starts don’t exactly elicit confidence heading into week one of the NFL season.

The question remains will the Chicago Bears’ offensive tackles be able to hold up against a deep and talented defensive end core?  The 49ers go about five deep with Samson Ebukam, Drake Jackson, Charles Omenihu, Kerry Hyder, and Kemoko Turay.  

The 49ers were fifth in the league in total sacks and first in the league against the run and seventh overall in defense according to Football Outsiders.  So the Bears will have a huge challenge ahead of them to get their offense moving.  The 49ers will be competing for a Super Bowl title based on the talent they have on defense.  The defense can very well carry them to the Super Bowl, much like it has carried them to the playoffs the last few years.

The Chicago Bears meanwhile will start two fifth-round draft picks in Braxton Jones and Larry Borom.  Jone has shown a ton of potential, while Borom is a good run blocker but sizes up as a below-average pass blocker.

How bad will it get for the Bears in week one?  That seems to be the over-arcing theme because there is little confidence that the Chicago Bears will get much going on offense.  The bettors have the Bears scoring 15 points in the game, basically 7.5-points per half.  That’s among the lowest week one totals to bet on to start the season.

All that being said, this is a different Bears team than a year ago with a completely revamped offensive scheme.  The Bears will attack the edges with their outsize zone running scheme which will put immediate pressure on the defenders and take pressure off of Justin Fields.

The Bears showed a willingness to use Justin Fields in the RPO game which means a team will show run, but then immediately throw a pass out of a run blocking set.  That means the defensive ends can’t sit in a pass-rushing stance like they did so many times a year ago in the Matt Nagy scheme.

Even when Nagy wasn’t passing the ball, he was running the ball primarily out of the shotgun which still meant the defense could pin their ears back and attack the mesh point in ways they can’t when you run out of the I-formation.

Second, the Bears will run a lot more play-action passes than they did a year ago which also means the defensive ends will have completely different responsibilities than they did a year ago. The Bears have also shown that they’ll be far more active in the screen game than they were a year ago, getting WRs involved in the screen game as well as TEs to slow down the pass rush.

Lastly, there will be far more movement in the pocket with Justin Fields than there was a year ago.  The Bears ran 15 designed rollouts a year ago, that;’s less than one per game which meant the defense could plan on rushing to a landmark on passing downs to disrupt the Bears’ offense.  They did that well a year ago as the Bears had the highest sack rate allowed of any team in the NFL a year ago.

So yes the Bears will be facing a monumental test, but offensive coordinator Luke Getsy is going to scheme the protections and the offense in a completely different way than Matt Nagy.  Despite the inexperience up front, the Bears will likely protect the passer better than they did a year ago.

There just isn’t a way to truly express in the ineptititue of the Matt Nagy offense and how it was designed to fail and how it was essentially an Arena Football offense, which is where  Nagy had his most success as a player.  There wasn’t any NFL aspects to Nagy’s scheme, and the elimination of that means the Bears will have a better chance than a year ago.

So a brand new offense with scheme versatility will put the Bears in a better position to compete.  The difference may come down to just how special of a player Justin Fields.  If the Bears pull out the improbable win because of Justin Fields, then the future is brighter than it has ever been in the history of franchise.

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Training camp is just a couple of weeks away and the excitement for the NHL season to begin is mounting well, as the team’s prepare to work on there respective projected defensive and offensive layout during that time and get ready for the pre-season, before the regular season begins.

during that span, we will be keeping a sharp eye on the Chicago Blackhawks’ lineup, starting with how the players will be accounted for in respects to being in shape and primarily to start the season with a huge chip on their shoulder with the negativity surrounding them all season long.

One will take you through a brief, but, detailed projected offensive layout of the players that will discuss the nature of the Blackhawks offensive power and ability to score.

Starting off with the fist line for the Chicago Blackhawks, which will have it’s dynamic duo leading the way, in Jonathan Toews at center and Patrick Kane at right wing. (Both who were unfair targets of trade talks all summer)

Along with the duo, it will be last year’s rookie Lukas Reikel on left wing, who played 11 games last season and accumulated 1 assist, resulting in a minus -8 average.

This combination of forwards is quite familiar to many, and what it brings is an offensive bang that we should expect from Patrick Kane, even though he is at age. Jonathan Toews will be more of a playmaking machine this year complimenting the likes of Kane and Reikel, and contributing on the front end on the net with nifty goals. Reikel’s role is to evolve and learn from the duo, where he can become a star-type forward and produce at a consistent level.

It will also give the youngster the valuable minutes to develop into a goal scorer or playmaker and mature as a prime leader of the team for the future.

What will the second-line chemistry bring to Chicago’s offensive layout.

This particular line is built from two recently acquired player’s, except for the right winger Tyler Johnson, who will be looking to make an impact on the team this season.

Recently acquired player, playing at center Max Domi, is a depth player who can make brilliant plays for his team at any given time. His ability to set the man up for goals is at a consistent level, also Domi is a reliable skater, who knows how to get under the skin of the opposing team’s players.

Also, recently acquired through free agency, Andreas Athanasiou who will be playing on the left wing .

He is a speedster skater, who knows how to score around the net, especially in sneaky ways. He will get under the skin of the goaltender, when the team will be on the for check and looking to bounce back in tight games. Athanasio has played 378 games, accumulating 105 goals and 91 assists, resulting in 196 points. His plus/minus, however, is at a minus -75.

And for the right-wing, we have Tyler Johnson, who had played 26 games last season with the Blackhawks. Recording 3 goals and 4 assists, resulting in 7 points and a -8 plus minus average.

T. Johnson, has had quite the decorated hockey career leading to where is he now, to a point that he will be able to make an impact with his two projected line mates in Domi and Athanasiou on the second line.

T. Johnson’s career stats are as follows, as he has played 615 games and scored 164 goals, with 204 assists, recording 368 points. His plus minus is at an astonishing plus 76 as he is a fantastic skater both ways on ice as ranked.

What will the top-six forward combination bring to the offensive layout?

This top six combination of an offensive layout is a powerful, but, somewhat modest gain of forwards that will be able to produce at a consistent level, providing the breakout need of a positive outcome.

The fact that the coach can work with this top-six of forwards and use them to his advantage, while tweaking out the kinks needed.

Not to mention the fact that the coach Luke Richardson can juggle the lineups incredibly well, as the top-six forwards are able to work in that capacity to figure out the system that works for the team itself and help the offensive layout.

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A man died and two bystanders were injured during an exchange of gunfire in Austin on the West Side early Thursday.

Two gunmen – a 53-year-old man and another man – were arguing around 12:30 a.m. in the 5800 block of West Madison Street when they each drew a gun and started shooting, Chicago police said.

The 53-year-old was shot multiple times and was taken to Stroger Hospital, where he was pronounced dead, police said.

A woman, 42, and a man, 23, who were nearby were wounded, police said.

The man was shot twice in the back and was transported to Mount Sinai Hospital. The woman was taken to Stroger Hospital with a gunshot wound to the arm. Both were listed in fair condition, according to police.

The other gunman fled the area on foot, police said. No arrests were reported.

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