Jack Cutler was having too much fun living in the moment Friday to want to relive an unpleasant memory involving his son, Jay, and Jay's new offensive coordinator, Ron Turner.

But the elder Cutler sought to clarify that he had no hard feelings for Turner over a misunderstanding eight years ago that has been dredged up since the Bears pulled the blockbuster trade with the Broncos.

"It is ironic that Jay is playing for Turner,'' Jack Cutler said Friday in a phone interview from Colorado. "But we don't hold a grudge or anything like that. I talked to Jay about the trade for a long time [Thursday] and again today, and it never came up. It's not an issue.''

Time has helped heal any wounds.
In December 2001, Cutler was a highly recruited quarterback out of Heritage Hills High School in southern Indiana and Turner, now the Bears offensive coordinator, was the Illini head coach. Recalling the events Friday, former Illini assistant coach Tim Kish was the primary recruiter and the Cutlers believed a scholarship offer had been extended during the fall recruiting period.

"So Jay committed but couldn't visit in person right away due to basketball and when we visited, Mr. Turner started backpedaling and pulled Jay's scholarship,'' said Jack Cutler, who earlier in the day turned in his son's playbook at the Broncos complex. "That's the way I remember it.''

By then, Jay Cutler already had turned down scholarship offers from Purdue and Maryland so eventually landed at Vanderbilt. Illinois used Cutler's scholarship spot to sign quarterback Mike Dlugolecki, who eventually transferred to San Diego State.

Subsequent stories before the 2006 NFL draft about that chain of events quoted Jack Cutler as calling that decision by Illinois "dirty,'' a word he didn't use Friday.

Turner couldn't be reached for comment but remembered a slightly different version when recounting the episode to the Tribune in 2007 before the Broncos-Bears game at Soldier Field. He regretted any miscommunication with the Cutlers and enjoyed a laugh at his own expense.

"I don't know why, but for some reason we weren't too involved [recruiting Cutler] -- I guess that's why I'm here," Turner said at the time. "It's one of those mistakes you make. I never offered him. We never pulled anything, no. It never got that far."

The way things turned out, nobody in the Cutler family is dwelling on the past as they consider an exciting, new future in Chicago.

"At the time we were really disappointed and it broke Jay's heart but we believe things happen for a reason and Jay ended up going to Vanderbilt and having a great career,'' Jack Cutler said. "There are no hard feelings whatsoever.''

The trade will allow Jay Cutler to play for the team he grew up cheering for in Santa Claus, Ind., and his dad to move back closer to his northwestern Indiana roots. Jack Cutler was a running back for Chesterton High School, about an hour east of Chicago, and later played a season at Indiana State University.

He retired in 2006 after 25 years as an Indiana state trooper and plans to move back to the Midwest after he and his wife, Sandy, sell their home outside Denver. Neither they nor their son could be happier. The Cutlers used to take regular family vacations to Chicago in summers to visit the city's museums.

"Jay's ecstatic,'' Jack Cutler said. "To go play for the team he watched growing up is something he always wanted to do. He wanted to do it coming out of college but knew Rex [Grossman] was there and that wasn't going to happen. But now he gets that chance he has dreamed about.''

The past six weeks have served up a cold dish of reality for the Cutlers as they have seen their son depicted as petulant and whiny. Owner Pat Bowlen wrote an open letter to fans in Thursday's Denver Post to explain the saga that said, "I assure you both Josh [McDaniels] and I made repeated attempts to reach out to Jay, and I can not speak for him as to why he chose to limit his response.''

Jack Cutler claimed the Broncos never tried as hard as they said to reach Jay and believed the team simply tried to spin the story publicly to make the quarterback look bad.

"It would be hard to believe [Jay wouldn't return their calls] if in fact they were really trying to contact Jay but they weren't,'' Jack Cutler said. "It's hard to read and listen to people cut down your son and call him a baby. So much in the media has been distorted. That was what was hard. The Broncos organization was putting a spin on it to make Jay look bad.

"It's unfortunate that it had to get to this point but it boiled down to a trust issue.''