WhoDat!656

How, after graduating with a marketing degree at Eastern Illinois, the maniacally focused football team captain drove a Buick to the Big Easy, stood in line for hours outside the Saints facility and eventually talked his way into an internship. How Pace painted fields, moved furniture and did other grunt work for $500 per month as he got to know folks in the football personnel department by sticking around the building past 5 p.m. to watch film.

How that led to a role in the Saints scouting department, which led to a 2009 Super Bowl ring, which led to Pace's promotion to director of player personnel, which led to the Bears making Pace the league's youngest general manager at 37.

Which brings us to Sunday at the Superdome where Pace — now a grizzled 40 in his third year as GM — proudly brings a Bears team riding a two-game winning streak into New Orleans, which always will feel like his NFL home.

Don't expect Bears GM Ryan Pace to copy Saints playbook for success - Chicago Tribune

"A Veteran is someone who, at one point in his life, wrote a blank check made payable to "The United States of America" for an amount of "up to and including my life."