After a bad loss to the Arizona Cardinals at home Sunday, the Bears are now 0-2 to start the season, and most of the fans' ire has been aimed at beleaguered quarterback Jay Cutler, who left with a hamstring injury in the second quarter after he attempted to, of all things, tackle an Arizona player he threw an interception to. Michael Wilbon, a Chicago native and ESPN reporter, went so far as to call Cutler "the worst athletic expenditure in Chicago sports history."
The Jay Cutler contract could be the worst athletic expenditure in the history of Chicago sports.
— Michael Wilbon (@RealMikeWilbon) September 20, 2015
Since coming to the Windy City from Denver back in 2009, Cutler's time with the Bears has been marred by disappointing performances and a series of injuries. While some of his poor play can be attributed to the franchise's inability to surround him with good players, it's understandable why fans and media are continually frustrated with Cutler, especially given the expectations he had coming in and the incredibly lucrative contracts he has signed with the Bears.
Which brings us back to Wilbon's tweet. Has Jay Cutler really been the biggest waste of money and space in recent Chicago sports history? Let's crunch some number's and see how Cutler's contract compares to other bad athletic expenditures in Chicago:
Jay Cutler: From 2009 to 2014, Cutler earned about $68 million from the Bears, and he'll average about $15.7 million in salary from now until 2021. In return, Cutler has racked up a 44-38 regular season record, 131 touchdowns, 95 interceptions, and one postseason victory. These stats are good enough to make him one of the best quarterbacks in franchise history. Now, given that the Bears' quarterback history mostly includes such luminaries as Cade McNown and Rex Grossman, this basically makes Cutler the sharpest butter knife in the drawer. And given the expectations that come with such a huge contract, it's no surprise that people are quick to say that making him the eighth highest-paid quarterback in the league was a mistake, especially considering it's only yielded the Bears a playoff victory that came against a Seahawks team whose record was below .500.
Alfonso Soriano: Chicago's baseball teams set the standard for bad sports contracts in the city, but Alfonso Soriano's Cubs contract takes the cake. Before the 2007 season, the Cubs signed a then 31-year-old Soriano to a backloaded eight-year, $136 million contract. Things started off well for Soriano and the Cubs, as they won the NL Central title in both 2007 and 2008 and Soriano put up impressive numbers in the regular season. However, his bat was basically a no-show as the Cubs were swept in the NLDS in both years, and things only got worse in the following years as the Cubs failed to make it back to the postseason with Soriano on the team. As his salary increased and his playing skills diminished every year after 2008, the Cubs were forced to trade him to the Yankees in the middle of the 2013 season. The Cubs were so desperate to get rid of Soriano they made an agreement to pay the Yankees $10 million to cover some of Soriano's remaining salary just so he couldn't play on the North Side.
Cristobal Huet: Not even the Blackhawks and all their recent success are immune to giving out bad contracts. In this instance, they signed goalie Cristobal Huet to a four-year, $22.5 million contract before the 2008-2009 season with the hopes that his presence in net would help lead them to a Stanley Cup championship that, at that point, had eluded them for more than half a century. However, despite being one of the 10 highest paid goalies in the league, Huet ranked toward the bottom in save percentage in the first two years of his contract. In the few postseason starts he did make for the Blackhawks, Huet did not perform well and often found himself riding the bench. After Antti Niemi helped lead the Hawks to a Stanley Cup championship in 2010, Huet was sent off to Europe on a loan to another team so the Hawks could better spend his contract money elsewhere.
2003 Soldier Field renovations: This is considered an "athletic expenditure" because it involves renovating one of the country's most iconic sports stadiums. The renovations in 2003 cost a staggering $690 million, and the end result was the construction of an alien spacecraft on top of a beautifully constructed stadium, a reduced stadium capacity that gave the Bears the smallest stadium in the NFL, and the revocation of Soldier Field's National Historical Landmark status by the federal government. This is worse than any bad contract given to a player. It's bad enough that the stadium no longer looks aesthetically pleasing, but if renovations just had to be done, they should have done two things: Build a retractable roof and expand seating (not reduce it). Instead we have a stadium that can't host events like Super Bowls and Final Fours that would drive revenue into a city that needs it. And now Rahm wants to spend more money to increase the seating, even though it might not be architecturally feasible.
Chicago's sports teams have a long and colorful history of making bad decisions with their money, and this only highlights a few recent ones. They're all terrible; Cutler's contract is just bad in its own special way.