Mike Mulligan

Dan Pompei, the Tribune’s Bears/NFL columnist, has been selected as the 2013 winner of the prestigious Dick McCann Memorial Award for distinguished reporting and will be honored during enshrinement week ceremonies in August at the Pro Football...

Twitterwas launched in 2006, six years after the Bears selected Brian Urlacher with the ninth overall pick in the 2000 draft. Jack Dorsey, the Twitter creator has said the name was chosen because he ran across a definition of the word that was a perfect...

There is an undercurrent of ambition to the firing of Lovie Smith. Winning isn't enough anymore in Chicago. Winning 10 games isn't enough, anyway. A new standard has been set. It may have taken nine years to figure it out, but Lovie Smith was deemed...

If a career falls in Lake Forest and no one around cares to hear it … Brian Urlacher's extraordinary career with the Bears ended with a resounding whimper Wednesday as an afternoon news release confirmed what long has been expected — that...

The franchise of Walter Payton, Gale Sayers and Red Grange could become the attack of Kahlil Bell, Armando Allen and maybe even Harvey Unga on Sunday at Detroit. Unga is on the practice squad and Bell has already been signed off the street and moved...

Bears general manager Phil Emery and new head coach Marc Trestman celebrate birthdays just a day apart from one another. That's one of the nifty — dare we say synergetic? — connections between the two men. Sadly, they weren't born in late...

The dark cloud settling over this Bears season grew even more ominous Tuesday with news that middle linebacker Brian Urlacher likely will miss three of the team's final four games with a Grade 2 hamstring strain. It's possible Urlacher could miss the...

The institutional failure of the Bears offense is even worse than most seem to realize. Not only has it failed to improve in the Jay Cutler era, the team has overpaid for that failure. An offseason investment of tens of millions of dollars has done...

Dallas is as good a place as any to burst through the growing frustration surrounding the Bears stalled offense. "We can't be up and down like a roller coaster,'' wide receiver Devin Hester said. "We have to get a winning streak going — at least...

The Jay Cutler-J'Marcus Webb controversy may wind up being a bigger problem for the Rams than it has been for the Bears. The key figures involved in last Thursday night's incident, celebrity quarterback Cutler and social media butterfly Webb, always...

It's understandable if the hype of a potential Super Bowl matchup one week, followed by a prospective NFC championship showdown the next, seems highly relevant midway through a season. But really, it's only hype. Getting to the real NFC championship...

The inexplicable months of delay between Brian Urlacher's left knee injury and an arthroscopic procedure to reduce pain and swelling a little more than a week ago is pretty difficult to understand. Why would the Bears and Urlacher gamble waiting for...