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Sports June 3, 2026

Illinois House Kills Bears Stadium Bill, Leaving Hammond on the Table

The House adjourned without voting on a Senate-passed measure, giving the Bears no Illinois deal and Indiana's $1 billion offer a cleaner look heading into a self-imposed summer deadline.

By Frank Donovan, Senior Correspondent Read the story →

More on the Sports desk

Sports Jun 2, 2026 Illinois Legislature Fumbles Bears Stadium Bill, Opening Door to Indiana The Illinois House adjourned Monday without voting on a last-ditch Senate measure to keep the Bears in-state, leaving the McCaskeys free to take Hammond.
By Frank Donovan, Senior Correspondent
Sports Jun 2, 2026 LIV Golf Hunts $350 Million as Saudi Funding Exits After This Season With Saudi Arabia's PIF pulling its billions at year-end, LIV CEO Scott O'Neil is pitching private investors to keep the breakaway circuit alive past 2026 - and bankruptcy is already on the table if the raise fails.
By Frank Donovan, Senior Correspondent
Sports Jun 2, 2026 Knicks Return to NBA Finals for First Time Since 1999, Face Same Opponent New York rides an 11-game winning streak into Wednesday's Game 1 against a Victor Wembanyama-led San Antonio team that just knocked off the defending champion Thunder in seven games.
By Frank Donovan, Senior Correspondent
Sports Jun 1, 2026 Illinois House Punts on Bears Stadium Bill, Leaving Team One Step Closer to Indiana The Illinois spring legislative session ended Monday without a House vote on a tax-financing bill the Bears needed, keeping the Hammond, Indiana option very much alive.
By Frank Donovan, Senior Correspondent
Sports May 27, 2026 The Anatomy of a Relocation Threat: Why Moving Is the Last Resort and the First Bluff Most franchise relocation threats are leverage plays dressed up as geography lessons, and the leagues know it, the cities know it, and the owners know the cities know it.
By Frank Donovan, Senior Correspondent
Sports Apr 29, 2026 The Second Contract Nobody Negotiates: How Pro Athletes Actually Fund a 50-Year Retirement Playing careers last a handful of years. The rest of life lasts decades. The math on that gap is brutal, and most sports business conversations skip right past it.
By Frank Donovan, Senior Correspondent
Sports Apr 15, 2026 Why the Front Office Became the Most Interesting Seat in Professional Sports The coach used to be the story. Then the spreadsheet moved upstairs, the money got bigger, and the real game shifted to the room without a whiteboard.
By Frank Donovan, Senior Correspondent
Sports Apr 8, 2026 How Formula 1 Learned to Stop Visiting America and Start Living Here The series spent decades treating the United States as a difficult but lucrative stopover. Understanding what finally changed requires looking past the Netflix mythology.
By Frank Donovan, Senior Correspondent
Sports Apr 1, 2026 How Legal Sports Betting Rewired the Broadcast Booth Without Anyone Calling the Play The legalization wave did not just open sportsbooks. It quietly restructured what announcers say, what networks sell, and what a casual fan is supposed to care about.
By Frank Donovan, Senior Correspondent
Sports Mar 18, 2026 What the Flood of Silicon Valley Money Into Pro Sports Actually Buys Tech investors have been buying into leagues, teams, and performance startups for years. The returns are real, but so are the complications they never modeled.
By Frank Donovan, Senior Correspondent
Sports Mar 11, 2026 The Second Contract Is Where the Career Actually Starts The rookie deal is an audition. The second contract is when the organization decides what it really thinks of you, and when the player finds out if the hype was real.
By Frank Donovan, Senior Correspondent
Sports Mar 4, 2026 The Shrinking Camp, the Growing Season, and What Got Lost in the Trade Professional sports leagues have quietly flipped the old calendar math, cutting the preparation window while expanding the competitive one, and the hidden costs are starting to show up on training staffs' injury logs.
By Frank Donovan, Senior Correspondent
Sports Feb 25, 2026 Why Some Sports Unions Hold and Others Crack: An Anatomy of Collective Bargaining Power The difference between a union that wins a work stoppage and one that caves in three weeks usually comes down to factors that get settled long before anyone sits at a negotiating table.
By Frank Donovan, Senior Correspondent
Sports Feb 18, 2026 Why Most Farm Systems Churn Talent Instead of Developing It The gap between organizations that consistently produce big-league contributors and those that simply rotate bodies through the minors comes down to a few structural habits that are easier to identify than to fix.
By Frank Donovan, Senior Correspondent
Sports Feb 11, 2026 Two Systems, One Game: Why Soccer Raises Its Players Differently Than America Does The European academy model and the American college pipeline solve the same problem in almost opposite ways, and the gap explains a lot about where U.S. soccer keeps stumbling.
By Frank Donovan, Senior Correspondent
Sports Jan 21, 2026 From Handshake Deals to Hedge Funds: How Athlete Representation Grew Up The business of representing professional athletes has transformed from a favor-among-friends into a regulated, financialized industry - and the players are still catching up.
By Frank Donovan, Senior Correspondent
Sports Jan 7, 2026 The Rights Cycle Runs Everything: How Broadcast Deals Became the Clock Every League Sets Its Watch By Television money does not just fund professional sports -- it schedules them, shapes them, and determines which risks a commissioner is willing to take and when.
By Frank Donovan, Senior Correspondent

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