There seems to be lots of discussion on the matter:
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2010/writers/peter_king/04/13/mail/index.html?cnn=yes&hpt=Mid
MMQB Mail: Big Ben deserves at least two-game suspension in 2010
"I'm a pretty hardcore Steelers fan (and father of 2 young daughters). I'm done with this team as long as Ben is a part of it.''
--@MarcMick, Steeler follower Marc Mickiewicz, in a Twitter message to me this morning at 8:51.
You're not alone, Marc. There's dissatisfaction all over Steeler Nation, about Ben Roethlisberger's serial immaturity, Santonio Holmes' substance abuse and Jeff Reed's off-field antics. Right now, Roethlisberger is the target of most of the anger. I read it on Twitter and in direct e-mails to me and hear it from Steeler fans I've encountered in the past month. It's an epidemic. The good thing, I think, is that Steeler brass feels the same way. Ace beat man Ed Bouchette, in this morning's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, reports that Steelers president Art Rooney II was furious when he watched the Georgia district attorney detail Roethlisberger's sordid night of boozing with underage girls and the furtive dalliance that created the latest firestorm around the Steelers' franchise quarterback.
I'm not sure who's going to suspend Roethlisberger to start his NFL season -- I suspect it will be the Steelers who will sit him for conduct detrimental to the team for a game or two -- but there's no question he needs to be suspended, though he's been formally charged with nothing. Make no mistake -- he's done plenty wrong, even if it's just as the prosecutor detailed Monday: drinking way too much, then plying underage girls with alcohol until one of them was overly intoxicated and he followed her down a dark hall, and bodyguards got in the way, and no one but the two participants is certain what happened next. Whatever it is, it's beyond bad judgment.
The Steelers, rightfully, are ashamed. Roethlisberger over the past nine months has brought that shame on the team himself, twice, and he deserves to pay for it with two games off. Without pay. Or, better yet, with the pay donated to Pittsburgh-area women's shelters.
And by the way, I would have liked to hear a little more I-screwed-up in Roethlisberger's statement Monday night. Whoever crafted that thing, here's a nugget: Who gives a darn about Big Ben being "more determined than ever to have a great season'' on a day he should be solely concerned with telling the world what a knucklehead he's been and that it will never, ever happen again?
The next step for Roethlisberger comes today, when he's summoned to the principal's office to get rapped on the knuckles. When Roethlisberger walks into his meeting with NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, I expect he'll hear words from Goodell to the effect of: "Ben, you've embarrassed yourself, you've embarrassed your family, you've embarrassed a family that's a pillar of this league -- the Rooneys. And you've tarnished the shield.''
The commish will be right. The best thing that came from the Georgia district attorney who declined to prosecute the case Monday was Fred Bright's point about what he'd say to Roethlisberger if he were his son, and his son had done this: "Grow up. Come on, you're supposed to stand for something.''
He should have two September Sundays to think about it, without football getting in the way.
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