The doorbell rings, and it feels as if the sun has broken through the clouds. The dogs rush to the front door. There’s Blue, the yapping chihuahua, and Marshmallow, the Shiba Inu with a limp. And here comes Misty McMichael with a big smile and a big hug.

A visitor has arrived, and Steve McMichael is as buoyant as someone in his situation can be.

Whoever is at the door undoubtedly will bring up his upcoming induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and if he could still smile widely and proudly, he would.

For a while, McMichael derived pleasure from Haagen-Dazs vanilla ice cream in his feeding tube, but he was cut off because it made him vulnerable to pneumonia. For now, he can experience flavor only in ice chips — Pedialyte, cranberry and Coca-Cola.

These days, satisfaction is scarce and pleasure is mostly a memory.

Three years into a diagnosis of ALS, McMichael, the former Chicago Bears defensive tackle, is about one year beyond when doctors said he might expire. He can’t move his legs or arms. Misty, his wife, has rushed him to the hospital at least 10 times over the last few years, always with dire fear.

He hasn’t been able to communicate verbally for about a year, but he expresses simple sentences through a speech-generating device that reads eye movements. The…

NFL team owners collect millions in revenue. They wield outsized power over their organizations and in their communities. They point to the bottom line, wins and losses, when firing coaches and executives, sometimes without giving them much time. But their own won-lost records appear nowhere.

Even people who follow the NFL closely might not know whether Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross owns a better record than New York Giants owner John Mara (he does).

They might not know whether female owners account for two of the five highest winning percentages since taking over their teams (they do).

They might not know that the only team without a traditional owner could lose 200 games overnight without dipping below .500 (the Green Bay Packers could).

They might not know that five of the last six owners to buy (rather than inherit) a team make up the bottom five in win percentage (they do — the lone exception is the Buffalo Bills’ Terry Pegula).

Some of these ownership situations are difficult to evaluate for reasons such as owners allowing their offspring to operate their teams. I’ve used simple criteria in ranking owners from worst to best win rates below. For our purposes, wins and losses are counted for owners after the NFL has approved their purchases; after an owner…

CHICAGO — Let us never speak of this game again.

There was nothing endearing or promising about the Chicago Bears’ 16-13 win over the Carolina Panthers on Thursday night. The only good thing to say about it is that it’s over.

Frankly, we have plenty of other more interesting stories at The Athletic. Look, right here, Chicago Blackhawks rookie Connor Bedard scored four points Thursday. And how about former Chicago White Sox broadcaster Jason Benetti going to the Detroit Tigers? Did you ever wonder why New England Patriots assistants fail as head coaches? We’ve got a story about that.

This game? This game stunk. You know if you watched it, and if you instead focused on “The Golden Bachelor: Women Tell All” episode, you probably saw more action.

But they pay me to watch Bears football and write columns about it. It’s what we call a Faustian bargain.

The Bears gained 295 yards and didn’t have a play for more than 16 yards. They scored one offensive touchdown on a 4-yard run by former Panthers running back D’Onta Foreman (80 yards rushing) and it capped off a rather unmemorable nine-play, 38-yard drive. That was the only offensive touchdown of the game. I think it’s fair to say that judging on his play right now, Tyson Bagent’s NFL career will last a lot longer as…