Ron Cook: Bettis' Legacy

It's time for Bettis to retire, but what a legacy he leaves
Sunday, January 30, 2005
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

For the better part of a week, I've been trying to work up a good case of sympathy for Jerome Bettis. I have to tell you. I just can't do it.

The easy explanation is Bettis is a millionaire many times over. How do you feel sorry for one of those? You know what Bettis is going to do when he's done with football? Whatever he wants.
You'd take that, wouldn't you?

Bettis will be a father, first and foremost. His fiancee is due in March with their first child. When he's not busy with diapers, he'll attend to his many business interests. He'll probably get into broadcasting and be darn good at it. He'll make personal appearances and do the autograph shows, where, these days, you could feed a small country on what they pay an athlete who can attach H.O.F. -- short for Hall of Fame -- to his signature. And he'll do his estimable charity work, both here and in Detroit, his hometown.

All Bettis has to do for the next 40 or 50 years is be Jerome Bettis.

Who wouldn't want that job?

Feeling sorry for Bettis is a little like feeling sorry for Dan Marino, who is to South Florida what Mario and, to a much lesser degree, Big Ben are to Pittsburgh.

We're talking a serious waste of time and emotion.

Yes, it would have been wonderful if Marino and Bettis had won a Super Bowl. Bettis probably lost his final chance to play in one when the Steelers were beaten by the New England Patriots last Sunday night in the AFC championship.

He acknowledged as much to his teammates during an emotional team meeting Monday morning.

Bettis could come back with the Steelers next season, but that seems unlikely.
Chances are they won't pay him more than the $1 million he made this season and, considering he turns 33 next month, they probably shouldn't.

It's not as if they are short of running backs. Duce Staley will be the man next season with Verron Haynes and Willie Parker as backups.

Bettis also could play for another team, although that, too, seems almost out of the question. He's a student of the game and knows its history well.

He remembers how sad Franco Harris looked in a Seattle Seahawks uniform 20 years ago. He's not going to want to look similarly misplaced in, say, a Detroit Lions uniform.
No, the best chance is Bettis will retire.

If he does, he won't take a Super Bowl ring out of the game, but he'll take away something more valuable in a different kind of way.

In my 25 years in the business, I've never seen a player who is more respected among his teammates.

It's not just that Bettis is the fifth-leading rusher in NFL history. Superstar numbers alone don't make a man beloved in his locker room.
See Kobe.

See Barry Bonds.

It's the way Bettis carries himself. "He is," teammate Hines Ward often said, "the Pittsburgh Steelers."

It's the way Bettis set his ego aside for the good of the team this season, first after the Steelers signed Staley to a big-money deal and then after Staley returned from a long injury absence, a period during which Bettis had four consecutive 100-yard games.

How many other Hall of Famers would have done that?

The other players know. You should have been at practice the day late in the season when Fox broadcaster Howie Long showed up with a new truck for Bettis as the winner of his Tough Guy Award. To see the players' joy for Bettis, you would have thought they each had been given keys.

The Steelers' feelings about Bettis were more telling after that team meeting Monday.
Bettis had stood up and delivered what sounded very much like a farewell address, thanking his teammates for their friendship, for their hard work and for a wonderful ride together, the memories of which will last a lifetime.

Did you see that picture of Ward on the front page of the Post-Gazette Tuesday? The one with the tears rolling down his cheeks?

You probably won't see anything like it again. Ward wasn't crying because of the loss to the Patriots, although it surely hurt. He was crying because he felt as if he and the others had let Bettis down by not getting to the Super Bowl.

"I wanted it more for him than for me," Ward said through his sobs. "He deserves to be a champion."

It's safe to say even hardened Bill Cowher also bawled at that team meeting. He practically turned weepy just talking about Bettis at his season-ending press briefing a few days later.
"I've got a lot of respect for the man as a man," Cowher said.
"He's a good player, a better person."

That seems to be the consensus around town, as well. That might be Bettis' most remarkable achievement, more impressive than his 13,294 rushing yards or his 82 touchdowns. We are not living in gentle sporting times. The disconnection between fans and athletes never has been greater. It's pretty hard for a man making $8 an hour to relate to a ballplayer making $800,000 a game. But Bettis has beaten that.

He didn't do it by winning four Super Bowls. He did it with his personality and his warmth. He did it by always smiling, even on those days such as last Sunday when things didn't go so well for him or his team. And he did it by treating his unique ability to run with the football as a privilege, as a gift from God.

So many players today treat their talent as a birthright and, shamefully, take it for granted.
Maybe Bettis isn't more beloved than the Super Steelers from the 1970s. But he's right there with those guys. He'll always be right there with them in this town.

And I'm supposed to feel sorry for him because he didn't get to the Super Bowl?

I've got to stop being so envious first.

(Ron Cook can be reached at rcook@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1525.)