As a Bears fan and partner in a season-ticket outfiit, I want to say one thing to the Seattle Seahawks:

Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

I was at today's "game," if you want to dignify the display of utter incompetence by one team (hint: Chicago) with that noble name. It was pleasant in some ways: cold, but with a warm sun and no wind. While the first half was a back-and-forth of equivalent mediocrity, the second half was an unrequited stomping I welcomed, for two reasons.

First, the Bears would go nowhere in the playoffs this year even if they made it, so a win would accomplish little except to hide the incompetence of their ownership, President, GM, coaching staff, and draft team. We deserved to lose, to settle down into the middle of the parity that is the NFL, and to think hard about the draft and player acquisition.

Second, sitting behind me were the four most obnoxious Bears fans I have endured in more than 25 years of attending games at Soldier Field, old and new.

Not just routinely stupid and loud and obscene: genuinely vile people. Despite the presence of many children in the vicinity, one or more of them shouted obscenities at the top of their lungs at pretty much every play. Every referee's call against the Bears was FUCKING BULLSHIT, every call that might have been made for the Bears that wasn't was a war crime, every Bears player that did anything wrong was a GODDAMN MOTHERFUCKER who ought to be cleaning jockstraps.

They smoked.

They pissed in empty beer cups instead of going to the Men's room, and cackled about it.

And at least two of them were cops, as they made loudly clear early, bragging of their DUI''s beaten by flashing the badge, so no one (including me) ratted them out to security.

So, when confronted with fans like these, I switch sides. I recognize that their potential suffering at the Bears' incompetence in all phases of the game far outweighed any joy I would have experienced had the Bears played well and won. Every interception-for-a-TD thrown by Hanie or McNown, every flag tossed against the Bears, every 3-and-out made these guys vastly unhappy, angry, miserable, sad. That made me and my pal John happy. If we had to listen to these mopes, and worry about whether they'd spill their cups full of urine downstream onto our feet (or worse), we wanted them to suffer. We were delighted when they finally left about five minutes into the fourth quarter, and a pall of assholery lifted off the rest of us. One of the two teenage boys sitting next to me, in front of two of these wastes of DNA, turned to me and said "They don't know anything about football. The refs are doing a good job today. We're just playing poorly." He renewed my faith in humanity.

About a dozen of us stuck it out to the bitter end. Several season-ticket holders in the area, once I told them that these guys weren't just smoking and yelling but actually pissing in their seats (a full plastic cup still there as evidence if CSI Soldier Field wanted to get involved), promised to inform the Bears and perhaps get the person whose seats they were using booted. Probably won't work: one of these mopes talked about where his seats were (south end zone, near the east corner), and I imagine they upgraded via some scalper. Next year, they'll be back in their end-zone seats in the cold, where I'm sure today people were grateful that their section's most obnoxious regulars were missing.

Meanwhile, I'm rooting for the Seahawks.

On another note, the souvenir stands were remarkably free of Sam Hurd t-shirts and jerseys. No idea why.