Chicago Bears Need a Football Man

The Bears are conducting their second round of interviews to hire their new GM and I have zero confidence that they will make the right choice.  The Chicago Tribune’s Vaughn McClure caught up with one of the candidates who didn’t make the second round of interviews, Giants’ Director of College Scouting Marc Ross who is down in Mobile, AL at the Senior Bowl.  Of course he was disappointed not to get a call back.

"“Of course I’m disappointed. You always want to win,” Ross told the Tribune after Senior Bowl practice Tuesday. “You always want to come out on top. But I’m in a great place, which I feel is the best organization in the league. So I’m happy where I am.”"

That’s not the real story, in my opinion.  Follow me after the jump to see what my issue is.

The issue is who is conducting these interviews.  Here’s what McClure wrote about Ross’ interview:

"Although Ross declined to discuss the details of the interview process, he apparently met with team president Ted Phillips, contract negotiator Cliff Stein, and senior director of corporate communications Scott Hagel simultaneously. Ross then spoke with coach Lovie Smith."

So you have Ted Phillips, who is an accountant by trade, Cliff Stein, who negotiates contracts and Scott Hagel whose background is in Corporate Communications interviewing a GM candidate.  What exactly are they going to sleuth out?  Do those guys have the respective backgrounds to understand his draft philosophy?  Can a candidate clearly explain how he plans to re-construct a team to an accountant, a lawyer and a communications guy and more importantly, do any of them have the knowledge to properly vet the candidates?  Do they know what questions to ask to truly discern between candidates?

WHERE IS THE FOOTBALL MAN IN HALAS HALL?

Of course Lovie Smith gets to interview the GM candidate, which seems to be putting the cart in front of the horse, doesn’t it?  Then again, he’s probably the only one with the football acumen to have a proper dialogue with a prospective General Manager.

I’ve sat through a fair share of job interviews in my day.  It’s important to interview across many parts of the organization.  The people who will work most closely with a candidate should be able to offer some input, but it sounds like these are the decision makers.  Is there a McCaskey in the house?  Shouldn’t George have some say in who gets invited to run his family’s sole source of income?

Is there any chance that Phillips still has the phone number of that search firm that brought us Jerry Angelo?