Steelers fans express some disappointment
Sunday, July 16, 2006
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Two weeks from today, with the Steelers finally, mercifully, on an actual practice field at St. Vincent College in Latrobe, Ben Roethlisberger will not only appear in a football uniform for the first time since becoming the youngest quarterback to win a Super Bowl in February, but for the first time since becoming the most famous motorcyclist since probably Evel Knievel.
While it's always intellectually perilous comparing athletes of different eras, I lean toward Roethlisberger for this discussion because even though Knievel's performances were more consistently spectacular, with challenging backdrops such as the Snake River Canyon and the fountains at Caesar's Palace, Knievel never had to contend with the Pittsburgh left.
Moreover, he was wearing a helmet.
More definitively, Roethlisberger is the superior showman to Robbie Knievel, son of Evel, who in a Fox production called "Death Jump," once successfully jumped his motorcycle from the roof of one Las Vegas hotel onto another, breaking only his thumb.
I guess "Broken Thumb Jump" just didn't have the same ring to it.
What a rip-off.
As we all know, Roethlisberger can break his thumb without going anywhere near the trouble, and still play so effectively that management has a difficult time even acknowledging that it's broken.
But this, the whole Evel-vs.-Ben debate, likely will be the only overlooked aspect of the next volcanic media spasm, which surely will erupt in two weeks, at least if the preceding week is any indicator.
Not since the troubling news cycles of June 12 and June 13, when Roethlisberger single-handedly altered a homespun platitude into "some days you're the windshield, some days you're the quarterback," has the relationship of sports to media looked so neurotic as it has in the past few days.
As trained journalists (that's right, don't try this at home), we probably should have been able to anticipate that the first fixed-face comments from the Steelers' quarterback would come well before training camp (in a bow to the ever-detested "distractions") and probably at an unavoidable media confab as far from Channel 11 as possible.
Roethlisberger and Channel 11 don't get along, and while I take no pleasure in reporting this, it's possible that if Roethlisberger does pour everything out on "The Oprah Winfrey Show," Fedko's chances of hitting that couch could well be compromised.
In any event, the coordinates at which Roethlisberger surfaced publicly were Los Angeles and the ESPYs, an elaborate network contrivance based on the quizzical concept that this culture simply doesn't do enough to honor athletes. This in a week when LeBron James, the Cleveland Cavaliers' sensation, spent many thoughtful hours on the question of whether to accept roughly $60 million over three years instead of $80 million over five years so as not to limit future earnings even though he's taking in $90 million over seven years from Nike alone.
Of course, if he doesn't win an ESPY, what's really the point?
The realization that Roethlisberger had started talking at the ESPYs taping and would soon be available at a weekend golf tournament near Lake Tahoe, Nev., still caught much of the local media by surprise, its more resolute assignment editors quickly flying folks westward.
The Post-Gazette's hustling Paul Zeise landed a face-to-face interview for Friday's editions, in which Roethlisberger not only pronounced himself ready, but revealed that he had extended numerous offers of counsel to top draft pick Santonio Holmes, none accepted. Holmes, arrested twice this summer on disorderly conduct and domestic violence charges, did not return the quarterback's phone messages, Roethlisberger said.
Roethlisberger doubtless feels he flashed some leadership potential with that gesture, and this is not to argue, but if Bill Cowher sat down tonight and made a short list of people he's close to being out of patience with, the first name after Holmes might well be Roethlisberger.
It's not like Roethlisberger hadn't been warned with Knievel-esque horror stories prior to living one, and the quarterback's celebrated "free spirit," everyone knows, has taken him into some unflattering situations in certain local taverns and even unwittingly onto the Internet.
Meanwhile, some gratifying number of Steelers fans squawked to the talk shows that it's outrageous and disappointing that Roethlisberger didn't talk first to the local media, the men and women who work at Steelers hindquarters most of the year and have nurtured his largely positive national image from the beginning.
Personally, in a week when Congress accepted an automatic bump for its members' salaries to $171,800 while stone-walling an increase in the minimum wage, when the Middle East exploded toward all-out war, oil prices spiked to record highs, Mayor Bob O'Connor battled a rare form of primary central nervous system lymphoma, and rebels likely continued throwing live babies onto bonfires in Darfur, I'm not real upset that Roethlisberger wasn't talking to me.
(Gene Collier can be reached at gcollier@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1283.)
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