Roethlisberger Revisited

His most recent walk on the wild side in the rear view mirror, Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger finds himself at a career crossroad. Meanwhile, most everyone else asks: When did the Steelers become the Cincinnati Bengals? Along about the time they wrung their hands mightily but still held their nose as team ownership and management decided, despite it all, to keep Roethlisberger in the black and gold for another season.

When last I visited this topic, I predicted that the Rooneys wouldn’t throw Roethlisberger overboard. In truth, it was a lay up as far as predictions go. In allowing Roethlisberger to remain employed with the Steelers, the Rooneys were just practicing the same kind of convenient rationalization that has permeated the Bengals thinking for years.

When the Bengals re-signed Chris Henry at the beginning of the 2008 season, they did so knowing that this was the same person that had been kicked off his college team and had been arrested on 5 different occasions while with the Bengals. But the Bengals were desperate for receivers and thus justified the signing by saying that they were now convinced that the player was serious about turning things around.

That didn’t work out too well for Henry or the Bengals. Last season, while away from the team because of a broken arm, Henry got into the ubiquitous domestic dispute with his fiancée. She tried to drive away from the dispute in a pick-up truck. Henry jumped in the back, fell out and died, a tragic end that seemed rather inevitable.

Roethlisberger hasn’t faced the same kind of criminal past as someone like Henry, but his past is pockmarked well enough. Roethlisberger may not be headed for the same kind of ending as Henry, but anyone that doesn’t think Roethlisberger is headed for even more trouble nonetheless is just conveniently turning a blind eye.

The Rooneys decided that Santonio Holmes, with his marijuana use and general bad attitude, was no longer worth the trouble and shipped his reckless soul off to the New York Jets for little more than a case of Advil. He’s now someone else’s problem. But then again the Steelers have other receivers on the roster. What they don’t really have is another quarterback.

That’s why the Rooneys are making excuses and minimizing the damage Roethlisberger is doing not just to himself but to their reputations as well. To hear them tell it, Roethlisberger is now on some sort of short leash with the only thing standing between him and a starting job with the Oakland Raiders is another episode of public drunkenness.

In normal times, the over and under on that is 30 days. But with all the paid lackeys on both the Pittsburgh and Roethlisberger payrolls, I imagine that they can keep him under wraps for longer than that. Forever is another question altogether.

It may be prime time in the NBA playoffs and the baseball season getting into full swing, but Sports Illustrated devoted their most recent cover to Roethlisberger, showing him on the sidelines as the unshaven mess he is on game days. It was a perfect metaphor for the unshaven mess he’s been on every other day as well.

The story they tell of Roethlisberger is something much more than a cautionary tale about how star athletes abuse the privileges thrust upon them for no reason other than their ability to bring smiles to the faces of grown men and women who gladly plunk down too much of the family budget to watch them play. It’s a lesson about how duplicitous those who should know better can be when it’s their wallet at stake.

The SI story about Roethlisberger is disturbing on any number of levels. The upshot though is that Roethlisberger has lost the ability to distinguish between real life and football life. He has essentially morphed into his stage persona of Big Ben in his private life and in the process has become a loutish, brutish doofus who seems to enjoy standingthisclose to the line between right or wrong or, perhaps, freedom and jail.

Teammates, some at least, will now at least whisper about Roethlisberger’s lack of focus and preparation. Others probably just shake their heads while Roethlisberger has surrounded himself with hired friends like the moonlighting cops swept up in the vortex as if Roethlisberger was Elvis and they were his Memphis Mafia.

What we do know is that like Elvis, no one dares tell Roethlisberger when he may be getting a little out of hand for fear of being kicked off the gravy train. Think about it. You’re a police officer in tiny Milledgeville, Georgia or Coraopolis, Pennsylvania or even a Pennsylvania State Trooper. You get to moonlight as a bodyguard for a stupidly rich NFL quarterback who likes to party and bask in the reflected glory. Can there be a better gig?

Actually, yes, but if these three had a discerning bone in their bodies they could see that. Instead they end up having the judgment of 13 year olds trying to steal cigarettes from the corner store. And to think that their day jobs are to protect the public from just this kind of conduct.

Facing a couple of lawsuits in Lake Tahoe, Nevada, one of which alleges he sexually assaulted a hotel worker, hasn’t seemed to made much of an impact on Roethlisberger. Neither did the motorcycle accident that almost took his life. He’s still reckless with women and with riding. Roethlisberger sees himself as bulletproof in every aspect of his life, so long as he completes the passes that lead his team to victory.

If you want to play pop psychologist, it would be easy to conclude that it’s all just one giant cry for help, that Roethlisberger has some deep-seated feelings of worthlessness that he temporarily salves by becoming the center of the universe. It’s more than that.

If he were a movie character, you could easily see him being played by Will Ferrell. The problem is that as inventive as Ferrell can be, I doubt he ever imagined playing a character this much over-the-top. Roethlisberger isn’t Frank the Tank. He’s Frank the Twenty-Ton Get the F--- Out of My Way or I’ll Vomit in Your Car and Molest Your Sister Tank.

According to the SI story, Roethlisberger’s reputation around Pittsburgh is starting to take a significant hit. It’s not a surprise. As much as we in Cleveland like to look down on our counterparts in Pittsburgh, they’ve always been like twin sons of different mothers to us. Their values tend to run similar as ours and despite all that Roethlisberger has accomplished for the Steelers, fans there are pretty much sick of his antics and would hardly have wept if the Rooneys had sent Roethlisberger packing. I’d like to think if the situation were reversed, Cleveland fans would be reacting similarly.

I also know that all it will take for Roethlisberger to reclaim his reputation in Pittsburgh will be to keep his nose clean, get the 6-game suspension reduced to 4, and then come in and win some games. It’s just the way those things work. It would work that way in Cleveland, too. Look how long Indians fans looked the other way with Albert Belle.

SI called Roethlisberger’s recent apologies tepid. I’d say they were perfunctory but why quibble? As Henry and a boatload of others like him have taught us, it’s not the words anyway but the actions. Towing the line for those not prone to it is more difficult than playing the game they love. That’s why the odds don’t favor Roethlisberger’s longevity in Pittsburgh or the league, for that matter. He may prove to be the exception, but it isn’t likely and just like the rest of them he’ll have only himself to blame when he eventually finds himself out of the league and just another fat, drunk, stupid and broke anybody who actually used to be somebody.

The Stench from Bengals' Camp

Here is why the Cincinnati Bengals will never be successful under current ownership and leadership: they lack any content to their character. Owner Mike Brown, after publicly parting ways with one of the NFL’s true miscreants, disgraced receiver Chris Henry, welcomed him back on Tuesday anyway with a new two-year contract. Head coach Marvin Lewis, who just as publicly said Henry was through as a Bengal, played the ever compliant head coach just trying to hang on to a job not worth hanging on to.

For both Brown and Lewis, there isn’t enough Lava soap in existence to wash away the stink of this decision.

Henry had been the poster child for all of the problems that had plagued the Bengals off the field. He’s been arrested five separate times, the most recent of which was just last March when he punched a college kid and then broke the kid’s car window with a beer bottle. The charges were dropped, but it doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen. It was that incident that finally caused both Brown and Lewis to sever ties with Henry, though there was plenty of justification well before then.

But of course that was March and no football games are played in March. It was an easy decision to make. Training camp was still four months away. The college draft hadn’t yet taken place. There was still plenty of time to juggle the roster and find a way to replace a semi-talented receiver whose only real accomplishment to date has been the record pace at which he seems to find criminal trouble.

Then August beckoned. Chad Johnson, who ultimately reported to camp after threatening not to (he should have listened to his incredibly verbose inner monologue), injured his shoulder in a preseason game against Detroit. T.J. Houshmandzah, the Bengals’ other go-to receiver, has missed both of the Bengals’ preseason games with a sore hamstring. That’s left the Bengals a little thin at receiver, which is kind of a problem in an offense that is based predominately on the throwing arm of quarterback Carson Palmer.

Thus did Brown, after much soul-searching no doubt, place a call to Henry. It wasn’t as if Henry needed call waiting on his cell phone to make sure Brown could get through. Henry has been unemployed since March. Not a single NFL team was even interested. That may be due in part to the fact that Henry has been suspended for the first four regular season games this season. Naturally, Brown felt that with that kind of competition for Henry’s services a two-year deal made sense.

Though he went along with the Henry signing, it was also pretty clear that Lewis wasn’t particularly pleased with this latest turn of events. Perhaps it’s too romantic of a notion to think that Lewis would have taken a stand for doing the right thing instead of the convenient thing, but it’s not as if Lewis is sitting in the catbird seat of the NFL’s best head coaching gig either. If anything, Lewis resigning in protest would have done more for furthering his career than another wasted season in Cincinnati babysitting a roster full of whiners, loudmouths and troublemakers.

Lewis knows full well that what’s been plaguing the Bengals most the last few seasons is the collection of reprobates that Brown has allowed on the roster. With the number of off-the-field incidents permeating this team in the past, the focus has been everywhere but on the game. It gets a little irritating, not to mention distracting, for decent teammates to be constantly asked whether another teammate’s arrest is distracting. That’s why Lewis was so adamant in parting with Henry in the first place. It was Henry above anyone else that represented the Bengals of old. Lewis thought he was finally entering a season fresh.

But Brown, as poor of an example to a father’s legacy as one can imagine, felt he knew better. Fascinated with the past and completely unable to imagine a decent future, Brown, in one sublime move, emasculated his head coach, reintroduced a cancer into the locker room, and ensured another season of jokes directed at a franchise that’s known far more for its buffoonery than its accomplishments.

Perhaps recognizing that he had just been thrown under a bus driven by his owner, Lewis did try to put the best face on it he could, telling reporters on Tuesday that in conversations Henry claims to have been humbled by the time off and the lack of interest in his rather modest services. Henry, too, tried his best to sound contrite while oozing smarm and instead came off as a textbook thug being given the fifth chance he doesn’t deserve.

In one unintentionally telling comment, Henry said that this was “pretty much” his last chance to prove himself. In player-speak, what Henry really meant that as long as he can show that he hasn’t lost a step or two in his stride and/or the ability to hold onto a ball once thrown, there will always be guys like Brown waiting to shower him with the kind of money he’s hardly earned, even if he happens to run into another college kid who just won’t listen.

Leave it to an offensive lineman, though, in this case Bengal Willie Anderson, to actually find the proper perspective to this whole, sad mess. In a story in the Cincinnati Enquirer, Anderson said that Henry owes a number of people, such as the Bengals’ beleaguered public relations direction, a huge thank you for, basically, having to suffer the fallout from Henry’s antics. “Those people busted their tails beyond duty helping him out,” Anderson said. “He has found the end of the rainbow three or four times.” This won’t be Henry’s last rainbow.

For his part, Brown will likely spend today as he does any other day, in abject denial about the state of his franchise. When he decides to emerge from the rat hole in which he’s living these days instead of dodging the press, he’ll undoubtedly express empathy with the fans who are frustrated by this decision, all while defending his intent to simply bring a winner to the great city of Cincinnati. He’ll also claim to have really done his homework on Henry, perhaps even channeling a little George W. Bush in the process, by claiming to have looked into the soul of Henry to determine that there really is goodness wanting to be set free.

But when this spirals out of control again, which it will, perhaps Brown can petition the North Carolina Department of Corrections. If the Bengals can’t find a third receiver, maybe Brown can get Rae Carruth out of prison before his scheduled release in October, 2018.