Baseball is different. Mostly because it is rarely 10 degrees.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

It's rarely 10 degrees here, too. At worst, it's like 20 for a game or two at the end of the year. I could see where January playoff games at home would be brutal, but the Bears have already solved that problem.

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Chicago will have St. Louis’ climate in ten years. The era of it being a cold weather city is basically over. You’re telling me you couldn’t have outdoor concerts there on today’s ten day forecast? It’s mid-November and Chicago has highs at very nearly sixty every day.

Yea you’ll get polar vortices or whatever other shit but the dynamic of there being snow on the ground much past February is done. Winter is like fifty days, if that.

And football is better outdoors for a TV audience.

It's normally a lot worse than a temperature controlled dome for most of November and December.

As I said, I get the funding issue. What I don't get is the idea that a domed stadium in Chicago would not be better than what there is now.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

I disagree. I want to see the full panoply of plays when watching football. I don't want to see entire sections of the play book ripped out because it's raining or snowing.

Of the 272 yearly NFL match-ups how many does this apply to? Maybe 5 a year? It makes it fun, and like I said it is becoming more and more rare for winter weather to be a factor unless you are in Buffalo or Green Bay (who both play outside).

Virtually none. So why put any kind of premium on outdoor football?

Aesthetics, the rare game that is affected by it can often be iconic.

Really if anyone should be getting domes it’s the Florida teams. They are the ones who benefit most.

I will never forget the Monday Night Football where the Steelers beat the Dolphins 3-0 in driving rain and the punt got stuck in the mud. This shouldn't happen more than once every few years, but I don't remember any Colts home games from the Andrew Luck years.

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I keep thinking back to the old St. Louis Rams dome: this non-descript brick/glass box that was basically the adjunct to a convention center that occasionally hosted the NFL, and the NFL games that were there always felt dark and sad. And it ably hosted Beyonce concerts and monster truck rallies and the Final Four, but as a football venue, it televised extremely poorly. Of course, part of that was that no one there liked the Rams much and that's why they left, but the Saints have hot crowds and their games look dark and depressing too.

Even Allegiant Stadium, which is what the Bears claim their stadium will look like until budget cuts take it down to looking more like the St. Louis dome, doesn't look that great on TV. You get a shot of the fake plastic flame here and there but for the most part it's dark and dismal and and overrun with road fans. Compare with the Oakland Coliseum, which was a fountain of raw sewage but fit the Raiders mystique and still managed to look cool on TV.

The Bears should have had what the Packers turned Lambeau into, which is basically a neoclassical monument to the game of football.

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The problem is that George fucking hates football.