State of My Steelers

This is not the team I admired as a child. This is not the team I admired last month.

The test of a fan’s faith cannot always be determined through wins and losses. In the case of the Pittsburgh Steelers, my faith is being tested outside the lines of the football field.

I can remember growing up in the late 70’s, watching the great Steelers teams of that era dominate the NFL. In those days, it was the Pittsburgh Steelers and everybody else and it really wasn’t that close. Four Super Bowl wins in six years is quite a sports dynasty by any standard. I remember my older cousins, sporting Jack Lambert and Franco Harris t-shirts, playing pick-up football games in the field next to my grandmother’s house, in a grass-stained haze of black and white, sweaty exuberance. I looked up to my cousins. They liked the Steelers and therefore, so did I.

Fast-forward to the modern era, and my love for the team stuck through those early, highly impressionable years. My Dad would take me to games at old Three Rivers Stadium. I remained loyal through the bumbling losing seasons that followed the great years in the late-70’s and early 80’s. I watched with amazement as the Steelers rolled through three-straight playoff road wins in January 2005, to an improbable Super Bowl win. I watched Ben Roethlisberger toss the game winning pass to a triple-covered receiver, Santonio Holmes, while keeping his tip-toes inbounds, in the waning minutes of the 2009 Super Bowl. My young daughter shared the couch with me and cheered along for the team that she had adopted as her own. My long allegiance to one of the NFL’s great franchises had been worth the wait.

Sometime after that, the wheels began to fall off. The players on the team that I loved to watch began to behave like lawless fools.

How am I supposed to explain to my daughter that the star quarterback, Ben Roethlisberger, may be suspended for a few games, because he chose to have sexual relations with an intoxicated co-ed (allegedly against her will) in the bathroom of a Georgia bar? How am I supposed to explain that Santonio Holmes was "traded" for ten cents on the dollar, after several off-the-field incidents where he smoked more joints than a Cheech and Chong festival? There have been other incidents including drunken place-kickers being arrested for public urination, domestic assaults and my personal, tongue-in-cheek favourite, the smashing of a paper towel dispenser at a gas station.

Within 14 months of their last Super Bowl win, the star quarterback has become a pariah, a laughingstock, an example of misguided fame and a failed standard of behaviour. The former Super Bowl MVP was sent packing in a hasty trade for a middle-round draft pick, due to his continuous refusal to change his misguided, off the field lifestyle. The wheels fell off.

Thursday night is the NFL draft. I hope the GM takes a long hard look at the players he seeks to bring to this team, and the impact their actions could have on the image of the team abroad. This team needs a severe public relations shine job, and fast. I want to win as much or as more as the next fan who watches religiously, each weekend through the fall and winter, but after everything I've observed and read during this off-season, I'm going to be a little slow, pulling that black and white jersey over my head when the games start up again.

Steelers Sour Saga

Oh, man.

I'll bet the Pittsburgh Steelers can't wait for this off-season to end. Getting back on the field HAS to be easier than this.

Their franchise quarterback, Ben Roethlisberger has been accused of sexual assault for the second time in two years. Last month, Roethlisberger, who owns an off-season home in Georgia, was out on the town with friends. Early-evening activity showed Ben hanging out in restaurants and bars, jovially drinking and carrying on with friends and gathering fans. He smiled, and posed for photos with cops and pretty co-eds. Then he made the mistake that dropped this off-season on its head.

Ben made the decision to disappear into a curtained-off area of a Milledgeville, GA club. A security guard was posted in front of the curtain, and told to only allow women to pass through. Allegedly, while behind the curtain, Ben sexually assaulted a woman inside one of the club's restrooms. No witnesses were present, and of course, both parties have differing accounts of what occurred.

I'm not going to pronounce guilt or innocence. The matter is being investigated. Roethlisberger has not been charged with a crime. However, with Ben having being on the receiving end of another accusation in Nevada, one year before, I am accusing him of having incredibly poor judgement.

Call me overly conservative, but if I'm facing sexual assault charges in a case that has yet to be resolved, I'm not going to spend a lot of time in situations where I might find myself in jeopardy of getting in further trouble. At face value, spending some time with friends in a bar or restaurant probably isn't that big a deal. Ben surrounded himself with friends and security who could monitor his interactions. However, he removed himself from the general gathering, and disappeared behind that curtain. Then he went into a washroom with a woman. Since Ben seems to have momentary lapses of good sense, one of his entourage should have taken him aside and stopped him. There should have been a voice of common sense, somewhere, through the pints and shots consumed that fateful night.

Either Ben has no inner-trigger to know where "the line" is that cannot be crossed, or he's a celebrity who continues to find himself in unfortunate situations with no suitable exit when times go bad. Is he targeted by opportunistic or vindictive women who seek to soil his reputation and collect from him financially? Is he a 6'5, 250 pound entitled professional athlete, who throws himself at female fans, and occasionally can't take "no" for an answer? I don't know the answer however my opinion is, he shouldn't have been there to begin with.

Don't live your life in a bubble, but don't continue to put yourself in situations where the worst could occur. Go out, have your fun with your friends, but know when to call it a night and get the heck out of there. There's a time and place for everything. At age 28, you'd think that Ben's bar-hopping days in sleepy-town Georgia might have been behind him. If this latest incident has taught him anything, they should be.

If that wasn't enough Steeler bad news, the latest example of their off-season of discontent is the exploits of former Super Bowl MVP Santonio Holmes, who allegedly threw a beverage glass into the face of a woman at an Orlando nightclub. The alleged victim had considered pressing charges, changed her mind, then changed her mind again. Where this case is headed is anyone's guess. It is yet another stain on the image of professional football team that once prided itself of employing athletes who excelled in activities on the field, and off.

It's early April. The team is participating in its voluntary off-season program. Training camp doesn't start until July. The Steelers did not make the playoffs last season, after winning the Super Bowl in February 2009. My humble advice to Roethlisberger, Holmes and any other player on the roster: put away the bar scene, the groupie scene, the party circuit and start lifting, running, throwing, training and focusing on the excellence that is required to excel at your career. Your prime only comes along once. NFL can stand for "Not For Long" for a lot of players, including the franchise cornerstones.

As Michael Vick, Adam "Pac Man" Jones, Matt Jones and Chris Henry, among others, have proven; athletic celebrity can provide almost instant financial stability. It also provides numerous temptations for the athlete, their growing inner-circle and others who want to get into that circle. One wrong move, in the eyes of the law, can take an NFL career away in the slam of a shot-glass. Worse, it could land them in jail and perhaps subsequently, out of the league, looking back on a career that could have been so much more, with better choices made in those key, defining moments. Two of the best players on my favourite team have had an off-season to forget. I hope they change their attitudes, their habits and refocus their priorities on a lifestyle that keeps them out of the police blotters and on the gridiron for several more seasons.