I'm as excited as the next guy about Matt Nagy, the new head coach of the Chicago Bears.

"Energetic but real, dynamic but humble, animated but down to earth."

That's how Tribune writer Brad Biggs describes him.

Yay!

But as I follow the daily analysis about the team's once and future prospects, I'm struck most by how much people make fun of general manager Ryan Pace's hair.

"I hope Ryan Pace puts more effort into finding a coach than he did into finding a hair stylist," went a recent tweet. "A lemon with a 1997 comb-forward" went another.

On a comment thread under an official @ChicagoBears tweet recently: "I need ryan to get that haircut faded. That's absurd." And, "Will someone recommend him a new barber."

The Chicago Sun-Times' Rick Morrissey ticked off a list of unanswered questions in a column about Pace's reluctance to make himself available to the press. Among them:

"What's the viscosity grade of the product in your hair?"

From the Tribune's list of winners and losers at Nagy's press conference: "Loser: Ryan Pace's hair. A salt and pepper wave of overconfidence. Almost makes us miss Jay Cutler's locks. Almost."

Now, I fancy myself something of a hair-criticism wide receiver, if you will. Readers are my quarterbacks, and they throw me a whole lot of bombs.

"I would ask you to develop some insight," starts one of my all-time faves, "but anyone who thinks the hairstyle you have is attractive likely is overflowing with too much narcissism to grasp the idea of personal insight."

News (not really) in the news: The haircut that divided a nation and shook a newsroom to its core

After a national debate about Chicago Tribune columnist Heidi Stevens' hair, the Tribune investigative team dove into the situation head first to recover the story behind the story.

I wrote about my hair mail a couple of years ago. I talked about it on TV and radio. The New York Daily News and AOL and Today wrote about it.

The hate mail kept pouring in. I wrote about it some more.

It's a whole thing. Readers still pepper me regularly with insults about my hair. It's a phenomenon I'm partly responsible for creating at this point, I realize.

Still, if I can use it for the betterment of our fine city's floundering football program, I stand ready to serve. (Also, Pace is a fellow Eastern Illinois University alum, and we Panthers stick together.)

Pace, if you're reading, I offer the following tips for dealing with your hair haters.

Have a line at the ready. Once your hair is a thing, it's a thing. When people recognize me in public, my hair is often the first topic they bring up. "Your hair isn't that bad in person!" We laugh. Ha ha, here we are talking about hair. But sometimes they keep going. "Why don't you grow it out/wear it up/straighten it?" It gets old. I suggest coming up with a standard, straightforward redirect and keeping it in your back pocket for those moments when smart-aleck fans (and reporters!) bring up your locks. "Let's talk football, want to?" Or, "You know who has great hair? Ditka. Speaking of winning ... "

Have fun with it. Despite what parents tell their kids, insults don't stop when you ignore them. Maybe pre-internet, but certainly not anymore. Better to use them to your favor, especially when they're as frivolous as "lemon with a 1997 comb-forward." Show the public you can laugh at yourself. Be in on the joke. Hop on Twitter and spar, good-naturedly, with some of the haters. Wear a wig to a presser. Bring your barber to a game.

Brush them off. (Ha-ha, brush) You do you, GM of a storied, century-old widely beloved sports franchise. If the side-part, slicked-back, tight fade is your thing, you keep rocking it. I personally think it suits you. And more important, I think it has zero effect on your ability to manage a football team. In the wise words of former first lady Michelle Obama, "We take our bangs, and we stand in front of important things that the world needs to see. And eventually, people stop looking at the bangs, and they start looking at what we're standing in front of."

Hopefully you're standing in front of a team that wins eight or more games next season. My hair and I will be cheering from our living room.

(Contact Heidi Stevens at hstevens@tribune.com, or on Twitter: @heidistevens13.)