It's good news Bears for commissioner

Roger Goodell, the NFL's bright and shiny new commissioner -- he gets it. His wife, Jane, the daughter of former U.S. transportation secretary Sam Skinner, grew up in Lake Forest in a family of Bears fans.

''I know how important the Bears are to the community,'' said Goodell, who was at Soldier Field for Showdown Sunday, the Bears' nationally televised coming-out party against the Seattle Seahawks. ''When the Bears are good it's a great thing for the NFL, so we're glad to see them back and playing well.''

The Bears are back indeed. Not since the glory days of the mid-1980s have the Bears looked this good. A 37-6 victory over the Seahawks on Sunday night left a deafening sellout crowd at Soldier Field cheering the lone unbeaten team in the NFC. The Bears joined Indianapolis and Baltimore as the only unbeaten teams in the NFL. What's more, they picked up another game in the NFC North with Minnesota falling to 2-2 at Buffalo.

It wasn't just that the Bears beat the Seahawks, mind you, it was how they beat the reigning NFC champions. They beat them up, they beat them down, they beat them all around. For a while there it looked as if the Bears had an extra defender on the field. Granted, Seattle obviously missed MVP running back Shaun Alexander, who is out indefinitely with a cracked bone in his foot.

But the Bears made Seattle quarterback Matt Hasselbeck look like Henry Burris, Chad Hutchinson or collective shiver please, Jonathan Quinn. While his Bears counterpart Rex Grossman blossomed from Mr. September to Mr. October the usually reliable Hasselbeck was left running for his life. What's the use of having four wide receivers if you can't get a pass off?

Shutting down Hasselbeck was remarkable when you consider he came into the weekend with a 102.7 passer rating on the road over the previous two seasons, trailing only Carson Palmer (109.4) and Peyton Manning (105.9) in that category over that period. Hasselbeck tied a career-high with five touchdown passes last week against the visiting New York Giants. He came to Soldier Field with nine touchdown passes and zero interceptions in his previous eight road games.

Hasselbeck was so abused the Seahawks replaced him with Seneca Wallace in the fourth quarter. Hasselbeck finished 16-of-35 passing for 196 yards and was sacked five times. Two of those sacks were by defensive tackle Tommie Harris, who had a monster game. The other three came against left tackle Walter Jones, a man the Sporting News has called the best player in the NFL. Rookie Mark Anderson had two of those sacks and Alex Brown added another. One of Anderson's sacks came when Hasselbeck basically ran into him while trying to avoid Harris.

The man who ruined Hasselbeck's passer rating is a man the new NFL commissioner has an interest in. Cornerback Ricky Manning Jr. intercepted Hasselbeck twice and also made an important fumble recovery on a Devin Hester blunder on a punt return early in the game. That's the same Manning who pleaded no contest earlier this week to a felony assault charge on a computer geek at a Los Angeles area Denny's restaurant.

Manning, who signed a five-year contract worth up to $21 million to join the Bears from Carolina as their nickel back, admitted to slapping the man in the back of the head, but said he walked out of the restaurant soon thereafter. A probation report said that Manning verbally attracted the man, of Middle Eastern descent, with an ethnic slur.

The player is now subject to punishment from the NFL for violating the league's personal-conduct policy. It's an issue the new commissioner talked to the Bears about on Saturday during a team meeting.

''The NFL is held to a higher standard and we should be,'' Goodell said of his message to the Bears. ''The players have to understand not only is it a privilege to play in this league, it's also a great responsibility to behave and be a positive role model in their community.

''For the most part, most of our players do. They are terrific athletes and terrific people and we're proud of them. When you have 2,000 young men, you are going to have some people who get themselves on the wrong side of the law. We are going to deal with that harshly.''

There is no timetable on when Manning could be suspended. But it won't help his cause that he was already on probation at the time of the incident for a fight he had in 2002.

Mike Mulligan and Sun-Times reporter Brian Hanley host a daily show from 10 a.m.-noon on WSCR-AM (670).