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Project Runway: Uniform edition
Felt the need to lighten things up a bit today after yesterday’s heaviness. And nothing could be lighter and fluffier than meditating over sports uniforms.
Nike is taking over for Reebok in dressing NFL players this year. And their theme seems to be making the players look like speed skaters. I mean really, how much tighter can you stretch nylon around 250-350 lb. men before there is some sort of wardrobe malfunction?
I gotta say. Those Seahawks uniforms are kinda awesome. They’ve come a long way from the days of my boyhood hero, Gale Sayers. Look at the muddy forearm-length sweatshirts those guys are wearing…
And what’s with the gloves? Every NFL team now has fancy gloves that allow players to put their hands together in unnatural ways to form their team logo. You sort of have to pretend like you are doing shadow animals… or jazz hands… or something. Bet you a thousand dollars Santonio Holmes is already practicing this move with his little Jets gloves. Was this missing in pro football? Is the league that has completely outlawed any and all entertaining displays of emotion suddenly encouraging players to perform hand puppetry after touchdowns?
The Steelers’ schedule has them opening the year on Sunday night in Denver against Peyton Manning. That. Is. Awesome.
You know what’s not awesome? The Steelers’ new alternate/historic jerseys. It’s like Pugsley Addams mated with Waldo and had a special needs child.
The stripes, the numbers, the socks, the white shoes, the skin-tight Dockers… no. Just, no. Apparently it was so bad, they had to photograph Isaac Redmond wearing it in the Steelers’ bathroom. The team has foolishly committed to wearing this atrocity for two home games this year. This is sure to completely throw off Bluz Dude’s Mojo Spreadsheet in which he tracks the success of his fan apparel for each game. Bluz, we are all going to insist that you get those socks and wear them on the appropriate weeks. I don’t care how historic those things are, unless you are playing for Burt Reynolds’ team in The Longest Yard (in my world, the Adam Sandler movie never happened), you don’t get to wear stripes like that. Hey, Mr. Rooney, an attorney for all bumble bees just called and is suing your ass for patent infringement!
But stripes must be the new black. Have you seen the new unis for the U.S. men’s and women’s soccer teams?
Speaking of Waldo, maybe this design is inspired by the men’s failure to qualify for this year’s Olympics, allowing us to play Where’s the U.S. Soccer Team? all summer. Pulling off that look is no problem… if you’re twelve! Or, perhaps, if you are sailing off Nantucket with Biff and Buffy. But not if you want to look competitive while standing next to guys from the Netherlands…
Those are bad ass. They don’t look like they were designed by Little Lord Fauntleroy and inspired by a Land’s End catalog. There is one accessory that should be included with the US look.
Perfect.
Dear Hines, please retire
You know you’re getting old when you stoop to tie your shoelaces…And wonder what else you could do while you’re down there! — George Burns
This week, the Steelers rather unceremoniously cut ties with their all-time leading receiver.
Ah, look at Hines Ward during his college days at the University of Georgia. He doesn’t look that much different from today. He had no hair, even back then. But there’s the smile, the enthusiasm, the sincerity… all the things that make us love him today. Did you know that when he graduated college, it was discovered that he was completely missing an ACL in one of his knees? It had been taken out as a boy after a biking accident. He never knew it. And he still won Dancing with the Stars!
This season, most Steelers fans witnessed the gradual decline of Ward’s skills. At season’s end, he reached the 1000 reception mark only because Ben finally underhanded a pass to him. By the end, he wasn’t able to contribute at all. His ol’ body just couldn’t do the things he used to ask it to do. It’s an invisible problem for many athletes, especially if they are still in pretty good shape. Little by little, they just aren’t able to run as fast, jump as high, lift as much, or go as long. And the aches and pains require a lot more time to recover.
Hines will always be a legend in Pittsburgh. As long as he stays out of the mug shots, that will never change. But retirement for pro athletes, especially football players, is a hard gig. They miss the adrenalin. They miss the cheering. They miss the locker room camaraderie. Many of them deal with a lifetime of pain stemming from their careers. Some of them are tortured by the damage done to their brains. 
Last year, I was shocked and saddened when former Chicago Bear Dave Duerson took his own life. He was a great player and person. Many thought he could have gone into politics after his career. But he was also dealing with dementia, brought on by a career filled with under-diagnosed concussions. He took his life with a bullet to the chest so that his addled brain would be intact and available for medical research. So sad.
For the most part, however, players only have to deal with having to find a second career in their mid-thirties or early forties. Some thrive, others don’t.
It’s often awkward, however, when they near the end of their playing days. There’s nothing graceful about watching a lion go through the aging process. 
They desperately try to hang on, but all we see is them becoming a shell of what they used to be. It’s sad when our sporting heroes come to that point when they realize that they can’t do it anymore. It’s even sadder when others begin to realize it before they do. The worst is when they change teams in that desperate attempt to hang on. That almost never goes well.
It would have been nice if the Steelers could have negotiated one more year with Hines at a veteran’s minimum salary, thus saving 3+ million dollars toward the cap. But the team’s salary woes are so tight, they can’t even do that, especially with a player they no longer see as productive. Baseball can do that. Football can’t. The salary restrictions are just too tight.
Here’s hoping that Hines reflects on a great career and decides to hang up the cleats and retire. Here’s hoping he doesn’t have financial problems that force him to pathetically seek one more contract. Here’s hoping we don’t have to see him risking his future health by struggling in a Buffalo Bills uniform next year.
Here are some of the all-time saddest moves by players who were done, they just didn’t know it yet…
Bobby Hull and his toupee, skating for the Hartford Whalers…
Bobby Orr, old but at least rocking his own hair, and trying to eek out one more season with the Chicago Blackhawks
Johnny Unitas, looking totally out of place with the San Diego Chargers…
Joe Namath, hobbling without any knees for the Los Angeles Rams…
Wade Boggs, going from the classic Red Sox to one of the ugliest uniforms in the history of baseball…
Tony Dorsett, with the Broncos? They shoot lame horses, don’t they?…
Jerry Rice, not nearly as menacing in teal, was he?…
And the all-time worst: a pudgy, lethargic Michael Jordan, trying to pay off gambling debts with the Washington Wizards…
Hang ‘em up Hines. Coast for a few years until you get into the Hall of Fame. Go into acting or politics. Start a business. Make a mint on the corporate rubber-chicken-dinner speaking circuit. Maybe even coaching. Just don’t make us watch you hobble around for another year or two. Sure, someone would probably pay you. But will it really be worth it?
Steeler fans deal with disappointment in different ways
It’s horrible to think that one might actually empathize with Adolph Hitler. But damn, I know just how he feels.
As we throw dirt on another Steeler season, my mother sent me pics from the 2005 funeral of Jimmy Smith. Long-time Yinzers may be familiar with this but since it occurred three months before my arrival in town, I was not. This Alabama resident was such a Steelers fan that this is the way he wanted to go out.
Jimmy may be recently deceased but he’s looking good in his black and gold PJs while forgoing the coffin for an easy chair. And don’t miss the table. It holds his can of beer and a pack of Newports.
And what funeral would be complete without Steelers’ highlights playing on TV. Jimmy may be dead but he’s not going out to any sappy organ music. And I’m sure they’ve edited out all the negative plays, just like in heaven.
Plenty of room for mourners. Put on your best jersey. Wave your Terrible Towel. Jimmy is going home in style. He’s hanging with Myron Cope these days. Don’t feel sorry for him. Feel sorry for the rest of us who now must deal with the off-season, NBA basketball, and the month of February.
The future’s so bright, I gotta wear logo-tinted shades
Must admit, I was not that torn apart by the Super Bowl. As most now know, we lost to a better team… better in all areas except maybe the running game. And when you are down 21-3 in the 2nd quarter, you don’t really get to use your running advantage.
It really has been an amazing six-year run. I, of course, take full credit since that’s when the Carpetbaggers moved to the ‘Burgh. On Sunday morning I was talking to a friend from back in Chicago. I told him that I hope Pittsburghers appreciate what they have seen. I hope the fans, especially the younger ones, don’t just expect Super Bowls to happen every other year. Fans in other cities, except maybe Boston, know that just doesn’t happen. Still, I’m sure there were some newer Steeler fans who were stunned at the end of the game. “We… lost? What? That just doesn’t happen.”
All fans view their own teams through logo-tinted lenses. Many fans are either way too pessimistic (Lions, Browns, Pirates) or a bit too intoxicated on the Kool-Aid (Red Sox, Patriots, Cowboys). Steeler fans are somewhere in the middle, but I fear that they lean toward the Kool-Aid side due to all the recent success.
For instance, we Burghers tend to see the Steelers as a recent dynasty with a quarterback wearing two Super Bowl rings who will usually pull us through with grit and determination. But there are those around the league who view Roethlisberger as a guy who is a few phantom Seahawk penalties and a Santonio-Holmes-cirque-du-soleil catch away from being a three-time Super Bowl loser. He’s a guy who is now in the 5 Super Bowl interceptions club. In his playoff career, Ben has 61% completions, 19 TDs, and 16 INTs. Despite this, I still say he is a guy who can get you to the big game, and that is a pretty small club of QBs in the NFL.
Overall, other than the O-line, the Steelers offense is young and promising. And the O-line is something that every team needs to constantly be developing. If injuries to the line was a one-year thing, the team should be fine on offense.
Defensively (and let’s face it, the defense is who has carried the team to success the last six years), Father Time is a bigger enemy of the Steelers, and I fear we may have seen that on display in these playoffs. The Steelers never played a complete game this post season. Could age be rearing its head? Is that why we didn’t hear much from Harrison, Polamalu, and Farrior? Is that why the hard-hitting, make-you-sore-in-the-morning Steelers D seemed absent the past few games? No big plays. Few cringe-inducing hits. No defensive touchdowns to turn the tide.
Besides the fact that it could be more than a year until the Steelers once again take the field in anger, here is a look at the Steelers D over-30 club (age next year):
Nick Eason (31), Brett Keisel (33), Aaron Smith (35), Casey Hampton (34), Chris Hoke (35), James Farrior (37), James Harrison (33), Keyaron Fox (30), Larry Foote, (31), Anthony Madison (30), Bryant McFadden (30), Ike Taylor (31), Ryan Clark (32), Troy Polamalu (30).
Normally, that would be okay for next year. But in a year when there may not be a next year…
That’s a lot of “experience” for a defense that is supposed to stop the rush, swarm to the ball, and rush the quarterback. Problem is, you wouldn’t be too impressed by the under-30 squad, save for Woodley, Timmons, and Hood.
Will we ever see #55 jerseys in Heinz Field?
Here’s what we can rest our Steelers caps on: this team has always been able to reload without dropping off the cliff. They have been able to remain playoff contenders, even while developing new household names. And they have rarely done so through free agency. They do it by drafting smart and slowly developing talent. For the Steelers’ sake, I hope that means that Jason Worilds, Stevenson Sylvester, Keenan Lewis, and Ziggy Hood are well on their way to taking the reins because if not, the Steelers could be in for some bleak years ahead.
Most experts see the Steelers taking an O-lineman in the first round of this year’s draft. That means that draft picks 2 thru 6 will be key. They can’t miss. They need to find some diamonds in the rough. Soon, we will see if Mike Tomlin is a developer of talent, or an inheritor of it. Soon, we will see if Ben Roethlisberger is a future Hall of Famer, or someone who backed into Super Bowl success thanks to a stellar defense. Soon, the best players on defense will be Timmons and Woodley, not Harrison and Polamalu. Soon, there will be more football. Hopefully. Please…. (hello, arena league!)
You don’t have to go to Dallas to get propositioned
Among favorite things about the Super Bowl are the prop bets. In this case, prop stands for proposition, and you’d be surprised at the ways in which you can bet on the game besides just who wins and by how much. For instance, you can bet on…
1) How long Pittsburgh native Christina Aguilera holds “brave” at the end of the National Anthem. The over/under is 6 seconds. (If it were Whitney Houston singing, you know she’d be hard up enough to lay what little fortune she still has on the over and then she would hold that note until halftime.)
2) You can bet on the coin toss. You don’t get much if you win, of course. You have to bet a dollar to win like $1.05. Something like that. It’s not worth it. I’ve done the research. In history, it’s been darn close to a 50/50 proposal.
3) Who will Fox show on TV first? Jessica Szohr (Aaron Roger’s girlfriend) -140; or Ashley Harlan (Ben’s fiancé) +100. (For the uninitiated, that means you would have to bet $140 to win $100 on Jessica while Ashley is an even bet… bet $100 to win $100. In other words, they are favoring Ashley.)
4) Hines Ward catches. Over/under 3.5 (This is tough because against teams with winning records this year, Hines has never caught more than 3 passes.)
5) At halftime, Will.i.am wears an article of clothing that lights up. 5/1
6) Fergie will dress as a Dallas Cowboy cheerleader. Odds are also 5/1.
7) Number of times they show Jerry Jones on TV. Over/under is 3. (Take the over.)
8) A punt hits the scoreboard during the game. Yes – 10/1
9) Number of times Brett Favre is mentioned on the broadcast. Over/under is 2.5. (Again, take the over.)
10) Higher total on Sunday: Ben Roethlisberger (aka, The Piano Man) TD passes vs. Sidney Crosby points. (No ‘Burgher would bet on this because you would have to root against one of them!)
11) Total field goals in the game vs. total goals in Pens/Caps game. (That’s more like it, except it’s no fun to root for field goals either.)
12) Color of Gatorade dumped on winning coach: Yellow 3/2; Clear/water 2/1; Orange 5/2; Lime green 5/1; Red 15/2; Blue 10/1. (What, no purple?)
13) Who will the MVP thank after the game: God 3/2; No one 2/1; teammates 5/2; Family 4/1; coach 10/1. (no odds on fans, but I’d go with that. Or Brett Keisel’s beard)
14) Steelers win the Super Bowl and the Pens win the Stanley Cup. 11/1
Anyone up for a quick trip to Vegas? Actually, in Vegas, you can only vote for the ones that have to do with what happens on the field. (i.e. coin flip and statistics, but no Gatorade, halftime, Aguilera, or broadcaster bets.) For those, you have to go to those shady online casinos… if such betting were legal, of course. Wonder what the odds would have been for there being more snow in Dallas for the Super Bowl than in Pittsburgh for the Winter Classic?
Collision course
A couple of thoughts after the dramatic weekend and the biggest collapse in Baltimore since… well since the Colts got smart and git while the gittin’ was good! Steeler fans, can you ever imagine your team just packing up and sneaking off in the middle of the night, uniforms, logo, and all? No, we can’t because we’re not Baltimore.
Sports fans can be a jittery, superstitious bunch. Their selection of gameday furniture, socks, clothing, snacks, alcohol, memorabilia, and physical posture all play a part in their team’s fate. Some keep spread sheets on such things to keep from making dreadfully avoidable mistakes. (Hey, Bluz!) Just think of all those people who made halftime adjustments on Saturday. They changed a shirt, went to a bar, switched chairs, and definitely changed their underwear. And it worked! I have no doubt that each and every fan who made such a halftime adjustment now believes that it was totally their action that made all the difference between winning and losing. But what happens now? Must they repeat the new routine? Must they adopt the new procedure?
I stuck with my Mendenhall jersey throughout. That’s right, Mendenhall. Like me, he’s a boy from Illinois making good in the Burgh.
And speaking of Illinois. Yikes, I could be in for a nightmare scenario here. My two teams are on a collision course for a Dallas, Texas-style showdown. That’s right, the team of my youth, Da Bears, and my adopted family, the Stillers. When my horrified friends in Chicago discovered that I had become an actual fan of “another team,” I explained it away by insisting that by rooting for the Steelers, I wasn’t really cheating on the Bears. It’s not like I’m rooting for the Vikings or Packers. On the wild chance that they would ever actually meet in a Super Bowl, then I would have to make a choice. But the chances of that happening are…
I know.
Even with the highly satisfactory dismantling of the Patriots, it’s still rather unlikely. But those chances have risen to 25%. But I’m in the uncomfortable position of not wanting to root against either team, while at the same time, not wanting to be forced to choose between families. On the other hand, I can root against the Packers as most Steeler fans can root against the Ravens, so that wouldn’t be a problem.
Nothing I can do but wait and watch. It would be a great match-up though. Two old football powers. Two old football family ownerships (Rooney vs. Halas). The Steel City vs. the City of Broad Shoulders. “Bear Down” vs. “Here We Go”! Cutler vs. Roethlisberger. Urlacher vs. Harrison. And for my money, the two best uniforms in the NFL. I just hate it when my kids fight.
From the big house to the outhouse
- A party waiting to happen
The NFL is a tough place, and not just on Sundays. Some say that those letters actually stand for Not For Long! Or, to put it in other words, “What have you done for me lately?”
A year ago, placekicker Jeff Reed was coming off a Super Bowl victory. He was known as Mr. Reliable and the only human being on earth who could kick in swirling Heinz Field. He was given a “franchise tag,” meaning he could not become a free agent and the team would have to pay him the average of the top five salaries of NFL kickers.
Did he have tendency to get drunk and make a fool out of himself with every variety of slutty party girl? Sure.
Did he get up in the grill of a Pittsburgh cop who took exception when a teammate decided to use Rooney Drive as a urinal? Sure.
Has he had a tendency to go 15 rounds with a Sheetz paper towel dispenser? Perhaps.
Does he look a little too much like a glue-sniffing Lloyd Bridges from the classic movie Airplane? Of course.
O how the mighty have fallen. Miss a couple of easy field goals… blame the grass… blame the media… blame the fans… and before you know it, your boss has grown tired of your act.
The Steelers seem to have decided that the solution to the team’s problems is to be found on couches around the country, or that exclusive community also known as unemployed NFL kickers. Good thing today is the Steelers’ off day. But I sure hope that Reed doesn’t drop by the team’s facility for a little extra practice ’cause things could get awkward. He might accidentally run into his potential replacement, Shaun Suisham.
Shaun Suisham was actually a practice squad kicker for the Steelers in 2005. Since then, he’s been with the Cowboys, 49ers, Redskins, Cowboys, Browns, and Rams. I know, I know… one might say that he’s been around more than some of Jeff Reed’s… never mind. But according to the Post-Gazette, he’ll be on the South Side today for an audition.
His resume isn’t all bad, too. The guy’s from Ontario, Canada, so, a little nippy weather probably won’t phase him. He matriculated at Bowling Green. Whatever. He’s 85 for 107 in NFL field goals. That’s 79.4 percent. Not Hall of Fame-worthy, but remember, we’re limited to looking for unemployed kickers listed on Monster.com here. His longest kick is 52 yards (twice).
If a switch is made this afternoon, a part of me will be a little sad. Jeff Reed is a bit like that idiot friend you had in high school. That guy who had no governor on his mouth and was completely uninhibited. Never unwilling to act the fool for a laugh. You couldn’t take him anywhere, but he was always able to entertain. He was an idiot, but he was your idiot. Besides, if you and your friends didn’t take him in, where was he going to go? In Jeff’s case, he’ll probably catch on somewhere else. There’s always a kicker somewhere who is about to lose his job or who has pulled a groin. There will be teams who won’t be able to resist signing a replacement with a couple of Super Bowl rings. I mean if Shaun Suisham has been on six teams, surely Reed can find one more.
Now, Steelers. How about that pass rush and blocking thing? As I said last week, though, it’s a long season. But unfortunately, guys on the IR don’t come back until next year. And the list of unemployed linemen is not nearly as impressive.
Steeler nation needs to “man up”
Okay, it’s time for some tough love here. And it gives me no pleasure to do it.
Notice to Steeler Nation: there are ways to use your Terrible Towel™ and ways not to use it. As this diagram shows, it should never be used to clean up spills or dry the dishes. But there is one other activity that it should never be used for: to dry your tears!
I am really getting tired of all the crying this year. For some reason, this year it seems that if the men of steel don’t win every game by 40 points, the team, coaches, medical staff, and ownership all suck. This is what I see in Tweets and Facebook posts. It flows across the waves of talk radio. The hand-wringing. The moaning. The doom-and-gloom predictions. I don’t know if the town is simply spoiled by winning 3 trophies in the past 5 years, but come on! Sometimes you have to just learn to sit back and enjoy the ride.
I grew up on the ’85 Bears. Wait. I take that back. I grew up on the 1970s Bears who were putrid. I mean laughing-stock of the NFL-kind of stink. I remember freezing at a game at the old Soldier Field as we lost to Archie Manning and the woeful New Orleans Saints! I remember losing to the tangerine-colored Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Then, during the 80s, things changed. Mike Ditka became coach and established a hard-nose, take-no-prisoners, Monsters of the Midway-kind of approach. It started to take. There was no free agency, so they had to draft well, and they did. They assembled an awesome defensive presence with guys like Mike Singletary, Dan Hampton, Steve McMichael, Fridge Perry, and Wilber Marshall. Like the Steelers of today, they were more fun to watch on defense than on offense. You could literally see fear in the eyes of opposition QBs. We had Walter Payton and Jim McMahon and Willie Gault, but the Bears offense would never be compared to the fire power of the 49ers. All the Bears offense had to do was get a couple of scores per game and that was generally enough. Especially when the defense was usually good for a score themselves. In 1985, we cruised to the Super Bowl where we dismantled the Patriots. All signs said this was going to be a dynasty. Then, NFL free agency kicked in after the ’86 season and other teams began to pick off our players. Payton’s skills diminished. McMahon became “concussiony.” Enter Doug Flutie, exit Ditka, and we never made another trip to the Super Bowl. Dynasty never happened. By the end of the 80s, the Bears had slipped back into mediocrity.
Why do I tell this sad tale? Because Steelers fans have enjoyed the kind of football success found in few other NFL cities. The Steelers have rarely if ever been bad. In the past 35 years, I believe they have had a top-ten draft pick only 4 or 5 times. And they haven’t had a top five pick since they selected Bradshaw with the top pick in 1970. What I mean is, Steelers fans don’t know what “suck” is. So, when they say that Arians sucks, or the O-line sucks, or the special teams sucks, or Jeff Reed sucks… they are insulting all those football fans in Detroit, Buffalo, Cleveland, Oakland, and other cities where true SUCK has become the way of NFL life. Imagine living in LA, the nation’s second largest city, where there is no NFL football!
Come on, Steelers fans. You are embarrassing yourselves. It’s like Donald Trump complaining about how bad the economy has been on his wealth. It’s like George Clooney complaining about how the effects of aging have impacted his looks. It’s like Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie complaining about how hard it is to do movies and look after all their kids. Cry me a freakin’ river.
Monday night was a road win by an injury depleted team against a divisional foe. But by listening to most Steelers fans, you’d think their best friend just died. Sixteen weeks is a long season, folks. There are going to be ups and downs. There are going to be blowouts, close wins, and hopefully, only a few painful losses. The Steelers are 6-2. Their defense is scary good. Their offense is still getting back into the grove of playing with Ben. Sure, the Steelers are 27th in the league in passing, but the top six includes the Chargers, Broncos, Cowboys, and Bengals, so maybe this isn’t the passing league everybody thinks it is. The fact is, the Steelers don’t have a world-class receiving corps and their offensive line looks like extras on ER. Still, the Steelers are tied for the best record in football. They have done so well that this week’s game against the Patriots is not even a must win. They are in solid shape. They just need to be playing their best football in December. Save the histrionics for January, when it matters. Pace yourselves. Get some perspective.
It’s okay. Come in off the ledge. Dry your face and pull yourself together. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. Start acting like you’ve been through it before. I only say this because I love you so darn much. Are we good?! Good. Now get out there and cheer on your team!
Live, local, late breaking, lost
February 2009 and May 2010. What a difference a little more than a year makes.
Believe me, the last thing I wanted to do anytime soon was another Ben Roethlisberger post. This week, Big Ben will be the cover boy for a big Sports Illustrated spread on his fall from grace. I don’t think it has hit newsstands yet, but it’s online. It covers all of Ben’s missteps since his motorcycle accident in June 2006. ‘Burghers are painfully aware of this little history lesson. No new ground is broken in the story, unless you count the part about how KDKA videotaped Ben on a motorcycle two months after the accident, sans helmet, flipping off the cameraman as he sped away. Doesn’t that seem like the kind of thing a local station would slap “Exclusive” on and tease for all its worth to build a huge 11 o’clock audience? It never aired. In fact, the tape doesn’t seem to exist anymore. Only the tales of those who saw it while it did exist. Here’s how SI described it:
Roethlisberger was riding his black 2005 Suzuki Hayabusa motorcycle, helmetless and without a permit, in downtown Pittsburgh when he collided with a Chrysler New Yorker. Roethlisberger hit the windshield, rolled over the roof of the car and struck the ground headfirst. He suffered a broken jaw and nose and underwent seven hours of surgery. “If I ever ride again,” he said afterward, “it certainly will be with a helmet.
A few months after the accident, a reporter and a cameraman for KDKA-TV, the CBS affiliate that broadcasts Steelers games, were driving on I-376 in Pittsburgh when they saw two men on motorcycles and recognized one as Roethlisberger, who was not wearing a helmet. They began shooting footage, which showed Roethlisberger giving them the finger as he sped away, but the video never aired. The station’s news director at the time, John Verrilli, and its current assistant news director, Anne Linaberger, deny that any such tape existed, but several people who saw the video gave SI similar accounts of the tape; sources believe the story was killed out of fear that it would damage KDKA’s relationship with the Steelers. “If we had been the other affiliate [which doesn't broadcast the games],” says one of the people who saw the tape, “it would have been A-1 news.” (A neighbor who lives near Roethlisberger in a tony section of Gibsonia, Pa., but did not want to be named has also seen the quarterback on his motorcycle. “I’ve never seen him with a helmet,” the neighbor said.)
Don't wanna make the Stillers mad!
Don’t want to report bad stuff on the Black & Gold and get your access affected, huh? I wonder who this story will embarrass more. Big Ben, even though everybody pretty much knows this stuff already? Or the KDKA newsroom? Remember, it’s not the crime that gets you in the end… it’s the cover-up. Nice job.
When you’re a jet, you’re a jet all the way
We're invincible!
As you probably all know by now, the Steelers took step one in addressing their juvenile delinquency problem by trading number one receiver (and former Super Bowl MVP) Santonio Holmes to the New York Jets for a 5th round pick. Basically they released him, without allowing another team in the division to pick him up. (You know the Bengals were salivating at that arrest record.)
Curious as to what who a 5th round pick might be? Here’s a short history: 2009 – Joe Burnett and Frank Summers; 2008 – Dennis Dixon; 2007 – Cameron Stevenson and William Gay; 2006 – Omar Jacobs and Charles Davis; 2005 – Rian Wallace. You get the picture–practice squad players. Like I said, the Steelers basically released Holmes but controled where he could go.
Santonio’s latest dust-up is not really that salacious in the pantheon of NFL scoundrels. But the track record is not good on Holmes, and the Steelers now know that it won’t stop. So, you dump Holmes in order to:
- Send a message to the team that this kind of behavior* will not be tolerated by any means.* It doesn’t matter who you are,* the Steelers are not going to put up with it.* Zero tolerance!* (* not applicable to 6’5″, 240 lb. –snicker– quarterbacks who wear number 7.)
- Get something for Holmes before he becomes a free agent at the end of next season and walks for nothing. (Although there will probably be a strike next year.)
- Avoid dealing the 4-game suspension he may still get this season.
- Get a few laughs watching Santonio and Braylon Edwards implode in New York City.
- Punish Ben Roethlisberger. I’m pretty sure the Steelers wanted to launch Holmes earlier–perhaps after the domestic battery case, or the naked Twittering, or the marijuana case. But I’m thinking that Big Ben went in there and said, “Are you crazy? With our running game? He’s our most dangerous weapon! Get rid of him and everyone will blitz on every down and I will get absolutely killed!” So they kept him. Cut to 2010. Sorry, Ben. Best save one of those bullet-proof police dog vests for yourself this year.
In my opinion, the jury is out on this trade. You can say that Santonio is the reason we won Super Bowl XLIII. But you could also say that the Steelers had him last year and failed to even make the playoffs. With low character guys like that, it will always be a mixed bag. In the long run, though, I’m for it. Let’s get the Steelers back to taking quality, hard-working, good attitude players.* (* see above)
And as for Santonio. Here are your letters of transit. You must remember this… we’ll always have Miami. I remember every detail. The Cardinals wore red; you wore white. Here’s looking at you, kid… in a Jets’ uniform. Mike Wallace, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
