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Monsters of the Midway? More like the Chicago Chipmunks

By David Fucillo

For those of you who are fans of the Christmas classic "A Christmas Story," you may remember the chipmunk line.  After Ralphie gets in a fight, his mom distracts his dad by mentioning the Chicago game coming up against the Packers.  The dad makes a joke about how they're called the Monsters of the Midway, but really should be maybe the Chicago Chipmunks.

Anyways, the whole point of that was to bring up the topic of renaming the rats that started this whole business with the tampering.  As annoyed as I am with the Roger Goodell and even with the 49ers for even putting themselves in this sort of situation, it's the fact that the Bears cried to the league about this that bugs me.  

While nobody has a clear-cut answer for why the Chipmunks pitched a hissy fight about this, Barrows threw out some rhetorical questions:

If the Bears and the 49ers indeed were in serious negotiations over Briggs, then the Bears would have had to known that the 49ers were talking to Rosenhaus. After all, who would trade for a player without a long-term deal in place? Maybe the Bears were angry because they sensed that there was a deal in place before the 49ers approached them about a trade? Or did they grow weary of Rosenhaus trying to leverage them with the 49ers' offer? Or were they trying to fend off a team they suspected had a very good chance of signing Briggs, who after all grew up in Sacramento?

Hopefully karma swings back and kicks Chipmunks in the butt, but that doesn't mean we can't give them the evil eye on this business anyways.  Accordingly, the time has come to rename the Monsters of the Midway.  Whatever we decide on will be official Niners Nation name for them until penance has been achieved (likely never).  So any thoughts?  I pulled Chipmunks from "A Christmas Story," but I know there have to be better options that that.  Chicago Rats or Chicago Babies is just too blah...something a little more subtle would work better.  Although I have no problem just calling them the Chicago Bitches, I'd like to at least make people look at the name and truly be reminded of all this.

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