Commissioner Roger Goodell delivered an announcement at NFL owners meetings about where the Bears stadium stands, after he had spoken with Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker.As announcements go, it wasn’t much. That’s because there is nothing more to the bill providing the Bears with tax certainty and infrastructure to go ahead with the Arlington Heights construction. It stands where it left off at the end of April, after the bill passed the House. It still awaits Senate approval with a deadline approaching."I've spoken to the governor recently and there’s a focus on getting something done, and there will be two viable options for the Bears to choose from,” Goodell said at owners meetings in Orlando."I've spoken to the governor recently. I think there's a focus on trying to get something done there, and then they'll have two viable sites that the Bears can make their decision from." https://t.co/FNNqDDn1fF pic.twitter.com/Rvwbk3j9aM— WMBD News (@WMBDNews) May 20, 2026Thanks commish. Tell us something we don't know. Actually, there is more now on it but it has nothing to do with building the stadium itself. Although, at least one of the viable options might be less viable.The clock is ticking toward the end of the month, and end to the legislative session. The Bears don't have passage of the megaproject bill, the plan to get their Arlington Heights stadium going while also allowing for other large construction projects in Illinois through negotiated payments in lieu of taxes.Exciting political in-fighting The real excitement isn't new proposals or changes to legislation, What is new is how heated the rhetoric from all sides has become in the Bears' quest for the stadium.It's gotten so bad that the Bears' stadium is creating a widening political rift between two Democrats, Chicago's Mayor Brandon Johnson and Pritzker.First, Pritzker opposed the Bears leaving Chicago. As recently as last fall, he expressed belief the team should pay some of the city's remaining debt on Soldier Field reconstruction lingering from 2002, even though the Bears had paid off their own contractual obligation long ago. This was also what Johnson wanted from the Bears, if they chose to leave.Now, with the possibility of losing the team to a Hammond, Indiana, site labeled by the Tribune Tuesday as a "slag heap," Pritzker has come around to the Bears' way of thinking and supports getting the team what's needed to build this stadium with their own money in Arlington Heights.Environmental concerns have not been part of lawmakers’ ongoing debate over where the Bears should move. https://t.co/iyjMe4PyFF— Chicago Tribune (@chicagotribune) May 19, 2026All the while, the mayor has denied an obvious reality: The Bears are leaving Soldier Field and Chicago, and will either be in Arlington Heights or Indiana. It now seems Johnson's idea is only to drive the Bears out of state if he is unable to have them for himself.“I know that the mayor has no plan," Pritzker told reporters on Monday. "He has come up with no plan at all about how the Bears would end up in the city of Chicago. So that’s problematic."I’d love them to be in the city but we are three years in now and he still has no plan.” Actually, it's five years since the team put in its bid on the Arlington Heights property, but who's counting when you're having fun? Give the mayor the first two years because that occurred during the failed Lori Lightfoot administration.There's no good reason to incentivize the Bears to leave the top tourist destination in Illinois or to gift them property tax reprieve when they already don't pay property taxes on a publicly-owned stadium. The Bears belong in downtown Chicago. pic.twitter.com/0rXr1V919t— Mayor Brandon Johnson (@ChicagosMayor) May 13, 2026Pritzker suggested Johnson's lack of a realistic alternative within the city to either Arlington Heights or Hammond is his M.O.“Again, we’ve seen almost nothing out of the mayoral administration here on that subject or really any other," Pritzker said. "So to show up in May and have a bunch of demands seems like late in the game. And it’s unfortunate that’s happened most years."A heaping helping of slagThe slag heap reference by the Tribune is to the land near Wolf Lake at Hammond, where Indiana has plans for a stadium. It's reportedly an industrial dumpsite covered over during past decades. The Bears have done testing of the land, but no results have been revealed.If this really is a slag heap, then Arlington Park looks like the only alternative for leaving the city. If so, look for this entire ordeal to linger in the state government beyond the spring legislative session.If the state and city have shown nothing else, it is that they know how to waste time with the best of them when there is no real pressure to get something done. Before it was being called a slag heap, the Hammond site at least produced pressure.The Bears first submitted a bid for the Arlington Park property back in June 2021.The Titans announced their intentions to build a new stadium a little more than a year later.The Titans are about to get a Super Bowl.The Bears … not so much. https://t.co/EPHsnAinpf— Patrick Norton (@patdnorton) May 18, 2026X: BearsOnSIAdd us as a preferred source on GoogleFollow