She was born into a football life and only took over an NFL franchise out of duty to family. She was an accidental owner, a victim of circumstance who mustered up all her strength and courage to do the job that her father, George Halas, had meant for her brother, Mugs, to do.
It was never anyone’s plan that Virginia McCaskey would become the principal owner of the Chicago Bears. Certainly not hers. She didn’t ask for it and didn’t want it.
Yet she did it.
Virginia McCaskey died Thursday morning at 102, and that longevity is as much her legacy as her connection to Halas, one of the founding fathers of the NFL, is. In her later years, national TV broadcasts invariably would take a few moments to show her sitting in a private box during Bears game and pay homage to her place in the franchise’s storied history. She was the link between leather helmets and helmet headsets, even if she mostly stayed out of the organization’s football decisions and mostly stayed out of sight. She was the grand lady of the NFL.
She attended the league’s first indoor game in 1932, when the Bears beat the Portsmouth Spartans 9-0 at Chicago Stadium. She was a toddler when she went along with her father and the Bears on Red Grange’s barnstorming tour in 1925 and 1926.
“I didn’t realize it when I was growing up, but there were difficult years in the late ’20s and early ’30s,” McCaskey told a public gathering in 2019 to celebrate the team’s 100th season. “My dad had the Chicago Bears, but he was also part owner of a commercial laundry company, he worked in real estate, he even tried selling cars. I often use the word ‘survival’ because that’s what was involved. Fortunately for us and for so many people now, it all worked out.”
For the longest time, 102 year’s worth, she was living history. But the truth is that her age became a shield for criticism. Few media members were willing to take shots at a proper, private, religious woman. She was a public figure who never really was treated like one. So the heat was directed at her sons, first Michael and then George, who as team chairmen were tasked with running a fabulously lucrative business they were ill-equipped to run.
The Bears haven’t won a Super Bowl since Jan. 26, 1986, when Virginia was 63. Their last playoff victory came in the 2010 season. While the Bears were in the middle of a 10-game losing streak this season on the way to a 5-12 record, fans at Soldier Field chanted, “Sell the team.’’
When she turned 102 on Jan. 5, the Bears’ social-media team wished her a happy birthday on X. It gave many critics another opportunity to beg her to sell the team. Now that she’s gone, there will be more public cries for the McCaskey family to sell. One long-running narrative has been fans’ great hope that her children would want out of the football business once Virginia passed away. Now we’ll find out if that’s fact or wishful thinking.
The gap between her graciousness, her innate goodness, and public anger over the state of the franchise was massive.
She was the mother of 11 children, two of whom have passed away, including Michael. She was a daily Mass attendee. Mugs Halas died in 1979, and when George Halas passed away in 1983, Virginia took over control of the franchise. She eventually let her children run the team but was kept informed on all major decisions.
We got a rare glimpse of her passion for the Bears in 2014, after they had fired general manager Phil Emery and coach Marc Trestman. She was “pissed off” about a 5-11 season, George McCaskey told reporters. She didn’t necessarily utter those words. But it didn’t matter. They stuck.
She was much happier to talk about the 1985 Bears and the late Walter Payton, her favorite player.
“That was a very unusual team and a very unusual season because so much of the normal stress of game day seemed to be disappearing,” she said at the centennial celebration. “We could go to the game and not be completely knotted up inside. There was so much confidence in everyone, and except for (a loss) in Miami, everything turned out very well.”
People are going to say it’s complicated when it comes to Virginia McCaskey, but it really isn’t. Many Bears fans could admire a lovely woman who took over a franchise when the NFL was dominated by men, but those same fans were not at all happy about how consistent the team was at being mediocre or worse at football. That’s pretty simple.