ANOTHER WAY AARON RODGERS COULD OWN THE BEARS.

He's raised the argument in the sense of winning all the games.  But if the Bears stopped attempting to hold up Chicago politicians for stadium subsidies, he could have more conventional ownership rights.

The Green Bay Packers have won their last six meetings with the Chicago Bears and are looking like possible Super Bowl contenders. The Bears, meanwhile, look likely to miss the playoffs again. But that's not the biggest difference between the teams. The Bears have been threatening to move to the suburbs unless the Chicago city government pays to upgrade their stadium. The Packers, despite playing in the National Football League's smallest market, are asking their fans to fund their stadium improvements voluntarily.

That works because the Packers have an unusual ownership arrangement, dating back to the Depression and made possible in part by Bear owner George Halas, whose descendants, in the manner of the House of Hanover, have not lived up to the standards set by Papa Bear.  Ownership rights are minimal, shareholders don't vote, and there is no solicitation of proxies authorizing Aaron Rodgers, who is the employee of the shareholders, to exercise whatever discretion he sees fit as owner of the Bears.

The use of public money for stadium subsidies (for a lot of notionally private purposes, to be serious) is a misuse of taxpayer money and of taxpayers, though, and selling even for fun shares to fans, rather than putting all taxpayers on the hook, makes some sense.

The Packers have an exemption: The team has been owned by stockholders since 1923, when it sold shares of the organization to keep the team afloat and to keep it in Green Bay. To prevent owners from selling the team to move it to a larger market, these shares could only be sold back to the team at a fraction of the price.

The Packers held similar stock sales in 1935 and 1950 to financially stabilize the team, and in 1997 and 2011 to fund additions and redevelopment to their stadium. Another stock sale is ongoing now. The shares provide minimal benefits: an ownership certificate, an invite to the annual owners meeting, and trivial voting rights on the future of the franchise. Even so, the sales have been enormously popular, with the offerings raising $24 million in 1997, $64 million in 2011, and a projected $90 million this time around.

It's common for sports teams' billionaire owners to push cities into bidding wars for new taxpayer-funded stadiums. The Bears' current threats are hardly the only example. The Raiders recently moved from Oakland to Las Vegas, where Clark County shelled out more than $645 million in bonds to fund a stadium.

Clark County got hosed. As did the Twin Cities, although they have bigger problems than the money they're losing on that pathetic purple gang.

Thus, although Reason's Eric Peterson sees some humor in the Bears taking an idea from "the hated Packers," rather than become another corporate welfare drain for the Combine, it might be balance returning to the universe, with George Halas's suggestion coming home.