You dont see this Bears fan panicking, do you?

Calm down, Chicago.

The Bears lost a football game yesterday, in overtime. Life might possibly go on.

You’d think that our veteran sports scribes would be cautioning us that it’s only a single game—that they’d be talking fans down from the ledge. Instead their main advice today is, “Jump!”

“You can call it an overreaction to an 0-1 start, but when you see the same things over and over again, you have a tendency to want to gouge your eyes out,” Sun-Times columnist Rick Morrissey writes.

I myself will wait another game before gouging my eyes out.

The Tribune‘s Steve Rosenbloom, never one for hyperbole, wonders on his blog what everyone should do “now that the Bears’ season is over.” Rosenbloom adds, “Raise your hand if you think the Bears could challenge for the No. 1 overall draft pick.”

The Trib also asks its readers to vote on whether it’s time to give up on the Bears’ post-season hopes. Eighty percent of the early voters said yes.

So it falls to a youngster like me to remind Bears fans that a sports team is never as good as it seems when it wins, and never as bad as it seems when it loses.

And to remind fans that the offense played much of yesterday without two starting linemen and its best receiver.

Sure, with two tough road games coming up and then the Packers, the Bears might slide quickly from this opening setback into oblivion. But it’s a little premature to throw in the towel with fifteen-sixteenths of the regular season to go.

Now, all you Northwestern Wildcats fans, on the other hand? Panic away.