Nfl 2010/11

Illinois Gov. Refusing to Pay Up on NFC Championship Bet
If I didn't know better, I'd say Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn is trying to get out of fulfilling the bet he lost over the Packers-Bears game.
It's baseball season now, and we're still waiting for the Democratic governor to get up here in his mortifying Packers gear and volunteer at a Wisconsin food pantry.
That was the penalty if the Bears lost to the Packers in the NFC Championship Game on Jan. 23 - which they did, of course. Had the Bears won, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker agreed he would cross the border dressed as a Bears fan and work at a pantry down there. He might have run into some Wisconsin senators.
I've never been a fan of these bets between attention-grabbing politicians trying to capitalize on the sports frenzy of the moment. The stakes are usually something hackneyed and uninteresting.
But they need to be honored, preferably before everyone has forgotten about the big game and moved on.
So is Quinn going to weasel out of this and hope we all forgot about it? Dude, don't make the bet if you can't pay the debt.
"No, no, no, absolutely not," said his spokesman, Grant Klinzman. "He fully intends to live up to the terms of the bet."
OK, but when? Quinn's office promised a while back that it will be sometime in the next few months. Klinzman was not able to be more specific than that.
"He's a very, very busy guy. I think you guys have been pretty busy, as well," Klinzman said.
Quinn was scheduled to fulfill the bet on Feb. 21 at Feeding America Eastern Wisconsin, a food bank in Milwaukee. But he canceled because Democrats and Republicans in Wisconsin were at each other's throats at the time. Plus, Walker was trying to steal Illinois jobs.
Quinn is welcome to come anytime, said Gina Styer, spokeswoman for the food bank. Will he ever show? "I'd like to think so," she said. "Stay tuned."
We're all going to be too busy recounting election ballots to notice Quinn if he comes anytime soon.
I asked Walker's office if they'd like to publicly condemn Quinn for his foot-dragging and perhaps throw him under the Packers team bus. They didn't seem too upset. "We'll hold off on that yet," said press aide Cullen Werwie.
There's one other bet that hasn't been satisfied yet. We're still waiting for the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, the city we vanquished in the Super Bowl on Feb. 6, to lend us the Renoir painting, "Bathers With Crab," as they promised. We want our "lounging, fleshy females," as our art critic described it.
"We have been in touch with the Carnegie Museum and they are going to make good on the wager. We expect the painting to be here in the fall," said Kristin Settle, Milwaukee Art Museum public relations manager.
Just in time for next football season, if there is a next football season.
It's not as simple as shipping cheese curds. The two museums have to coordinate their calendars and work out transportation and insurance issues.
It appears other public bets were long ago paid off. The Pennsylvania governor, who also lost to Walker, wore Packers gear in public. In a wager with Green Bay Mayor Jim Schmitt, the mayor of Pittsburgh donned a Packers shirt and shoveled snow at the church where Packers coach Mike McCarthy's family attends in Pittsburgh.
Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch had a couple of radio jocks from Chicago bring deep-dish pizza to her office. And Milwaukee Archbishop Jerome Listecki also received a pizza - albeit a surprisingly puny one - from the cardinal of Chicago. Green Bay Bishop David Ricken won his friendly bet with the bishop of Pittsburgh, with the loser donating to the winner's charity. In the end, each gave to the other's charity.
And the Milwaukee Public Library kicked the Pittsburgh library's butt in a bet and enjoyed seeing them put a Packers jersey on a life-sized stand-up of Andrew Carnegie and photograph it in various locations.
In Gov. Quinn's defense, he did pay part of the bet by displaying a Packers flag in front of his office on the Friday before the Bear-less Super Bowl.
"I recall that very clearly," Klinzman said. "That was a painful day."

http://bleacherreport.com/tb/b8VHG']http://bleacherreport.com/tb/b8VHG

 

Hmmmm..... a politician NOT living up to his word....color me shocked....