Fed-Up Bulls Fans Have Raised Enough Money For A 'Fire GarPax' Billboard

By Stephen Gossett in News on Jun 26, 2017 8:22PM

Via GoFundMe / When Bulls fans want something done...

After the Grade F Jimmy Butler deal last week, Chicago Bulls GM Gar Forman and VP of basketball operations John Paxson went a long way to securing their status as the most loathed figures in local pro sports. Now, in one of those stories that makes you appreciate just how gloriously deep the sports passion run in this town, hundreds of fed-up fans are ponying up to literally advertise their desire to axe the front-office pair. A crowdfunding campaign to rent a billboard that calls for the duo's firing has already raised nearly $7,000—enough to conceivably make it happen.

The Butler blunder was just the "last straw" in a pattern of mismanagement that includes questionable coaching hires and bad draft-pick decisions stretching back years, said campaign creator Brendon Henderson, 22, of South Bend, Indiana.

More than 600 donors apparently feel the same way, having pledged enough to clear the cost of a digital billboard, Henderson told Chicagoist.

Now that the funds are in place, the logistics are in motion, too. Henderson said he's in talks with two different billboard agencies to gauge possibilities. The communications director of one of the companies told Chicagoist that the firm is still "reviewing the creative." The second did not immediately return a request for comment, but Henderson said the company has expressed interest as long as the content is kept appropriate.

The end design will be "a little more intricate" than what you see above, Henderson said, although he wants the exact look to be a surprise. Expect the "Fire GarPax" message to be front and center, though.

Placement for the billboard, assuming it progresses, is still up in the air (no pun intended). The original hope was for the Kennedy Expressway. "But we decided that wasn't a great idea," Henderson said, "We want people to stop, take pictures, spark a discussion—which you can't really do from the highway."

However it unfolds, the campaign should bear fruit somehow. Even if an agency declines to move forward with the Fire GarPax billboard all the money will be donated to a TBD non-profit, according to the campaign. Maybe this rebuild will have some highlights after all.