The Chicago Bears new franchise quarterback is still driving an old car. Mitch Trubisky, second overall pick in the 2017 Draft, showed up to Bears minicamp driving an old tan Toyota with a novelty North Carolina Tar Heels license plate on the front.
Trubisky, who has not signed a contract with the Bears yet, promised he would drive his grandmother’s old car to his first day on the job if he were drafted by Chicago.
Ryan Pace made Tru promise he'd drive his car, formerly grandma's car, to Halas Hall. The kid kept his promise. pic.twitter.com/Lxil2nJkiB
— Chicago Bears (@ChicagoBears) May 11, 2017
The story of Mitch Trubisky’s car starts with Bears general manager Ryan Pace, who traveled with other Chicago staff to meet Trubisky in North Carolina for a pre-draft dinner.
“So we go to dinner, and we’re walking back to the parking lot all of us, and he’s walking towards his car and he starts laughing,” Pace said on draft night. “There’s some hubcaps that are missing, and the thing is kind of just falling apart, and we joked at that moment like “Hey, you need to bring this car to Chicago, don’t change.” And he’s like, “I don’t know if it’s going to make it to Chicago,” so I said, “I don’t care if you have to change the engine but you’ve got to keep the shell.”
The car became a minor draft night story, and Trubisky explained how he ended up with the car to reporters.
“I got that my freshman or sophomore year of college,” Trubisky said. “My dad drove it up for me from Florida. So yeah, that’s my car and it’s got 170,000 miles on it so it can still lug around a little bit. It moves pretty well. Gets me from Point A to Point B and yeah, that’s what I drive.”
Basically, the Bears were so amused that a college kid was driving a college kid car that they traded up one spot for no reason to draft him. That might actually make him the first millennial to get a job after college just because it looked like he had a lot of student loan debt, but good for him. Maybe this economy really is improving.
Once Trubisky signs I’m sure he’ll figure out a new way to get to work. His rookie contract is expected to be worth about $28 million dollars. But for now, cool car kid. Amateurism really is full of whimsey.
