A lot of people who are Notre Dame fans are also Chicago Bears fans. South Bend, Indiana, and Chicago aren’t that far apart. Notre Dame’s large national alumni base has a huge central hub in the Windy City, so the Irish-Bears combination is not a fringe group. It’s a massive one. With this in mind, how many Chicago Bears fans who also root for Notre Dame have a positive view of Caleb Williams in spite of his terrible game for USC versus the Fighting Irish last October?
We wanted to get deeper insights on this topic, so we asked Fighting Irish Wire editor Nick Shepkowski, who is a Notre Dame-Bears combo fan.
Did that Notre Dame game make Bears fans uneasy about Caleb?
“It’s always referenced by those who wanted to keep Justin Fields and not draft Williams,” Shepkowski told us. “The thing you have to remember is that Notre Dame had the best pass defense in college football last year based off pass efficency against, so it wasn’t like it was some slouch of a defense he had issues with. I think there was a lot of counter culture type stuff going on with the anti-Williams crowd, but you’d be hard-pressed to find very many people in Chicagoland not excited about the future of the Bears right now. Now, if they’d just stop politicking for taxpayer money to fund their potential new stadium…”
So there you have it: At least one Irish-Bears combo fan isn’t sweating last year’s game in South Bend.
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