The short version
There is no Roethlisberger and me. I will watch no game in which he starts. Period. This could well mean not watching my team for the next six years, but considering that the point of football is for me to have fun, it won't be that much of a sacrifice to not watch that unrepentant, sexual-predating lump of yak shit wear my beloved childhood team's uniform.
The long version
I may have started rooting for the Steelers because they drove my Browns fan dad insane, but I soon fell in love with the team and the town. I'm not from Pittsburgh. I have scant Pittsburgh ties. Yet I aspire to be considered a Pittsburgh guy: honorable, generous, unpretentious—everything but hard-working. There, we have to agree to disagree.
The Packers are largely owned by their townspeople, who pass stock from one generation to the next. This is unassailably cool. The Cowboys and Seahawks and Patriots and Redskins and 25 other teams are owned by titans of industry who bought themselves a football team to park between their Lamborghini and their Rolls. I suppose this is cool, in its way, to someone. Here's what's cool to me: I'm on my third gray-haired Mr. Rooney. The team is still run by the same family that started it, nearly 80 years ago.
The first Mr. Rooney was a league and local legend. Using $2500 he won at the race track, he started a football team in his hometown in the nascent NFL. The Steelers sucked horribly for forty years, winning absolutely nothing. But Art Rooney otherwise took care of his own. He couldn't resist a hard-luck story, and he invented bogus team jobs for neighbors down on their luck. Steelers player had his career cut short? Get him a job in the front office as a scout. Get him something, anything. The players and community adored him, and he them. If a parking attendant from three decades earlier died in obscurity in Oregon, his widow wouldn't be at all shocked to see Mr. Rooney show up alone at the funeral, without even being told of the death. "Your letters meant the world to him at the end," she'd tell him.
I cannot capture the magnificence of the man in just these short paragraphs. But when he died, the stories erupted about the thousands of lives he'd touched. Even his sons had no idea of all his efforts on behalf of others. To this day, they are stopped by strangers in strange towns and told what their father had done for the person at a key point in his life.
I love this about my team.
I love that the Steelers finally put it together in the 70s, when their fans needed something, anything positive in their miserable lives. The steel industry collapsed, and Pittsburgh lost 40% of its population. The economy crumbled, jobs vaporized, and neighbors and families were ripped apart. But Pittsburghers got four shimmering Super Bowl trophies as a distraction from their considerable miseries. And focus they did. The Steelers just mean more to their fans than other teams do to theirs, and I don't necessarily mean that as a compliment. The attachment borders on scary codependence. Pittsburghers scattered across the country, permanently resettling. They are a nation in the truest sense of the term--a displaced people from a common point of origin, now with only a common team binding them. And I love that they're raising their kids as Steelers fans in every corner of the country. Show me a list of Patriots clubs like this. We've got 11 in freaking Alaska.
I also love that there's a fraternity of players across the generations. Players seemingly never leave the community. Franco Harris and Jerome Bettis played 13 years apart, but they just called the Steelers' new sixth round draft pick to tell him about the mantle he'll be carrying. Players from all across the country never leave. Black or white, famous or not, from southern Georgia or southern Cal, they want to live in Pittsburgh with decent Pittsburgh folk, raise their families among them, start businesses and charities and ministries there, run for governor there.
So, so special.
If it's starting to seem like my choice of football teams has as much to do with my values as it does football, then I have succeeded.
Which brings us to Ben.
He had better pray that I never need to brake in order for his ass to live. Already reviled in Pittsburgh for his sneering rudeness, now he's, at best, a moronic sexual predator. I hate the guy. I hate him personally, and I detest that he's wearing Rocky Bleier's and Mel Blount's colors. Will the rapist stink ever come out of the uniform?
"As soon as he throws five touchdowns, this will all be forgotten," says some douchenozzle on the radio, causing me to wonder just how many rapists there are in the world. Forget this? Bet me. This isn't Kobe or Vick. (Quick: define Lakers or Eagles integrity. What's an L.A guy?) This is a serial creep who's sullied everything that mattered to me about my team. Everything. Including his two championships. Tell me, if I'm such a whore, how come I now recoil away from footage of Ben's two Super Bowl victories? It's like trying to enjoy childhood photos of my girlfriend's molester.
Aw. He was so cute once!
What's next
Beats me. I'll watch the Steelers' first four games, during his suspension. Then I'll watch Ben find Jesus, followed by his quick engagement to a local Christian girl. After that, I'm going to wander the football landscape. I won't root for another pro team, but I think I'll pick one to follow. Maybe I'll watch the Browns reboot. They're in the division, at least.
As for the Steelers, I understand why they didn't cut or trade him at this point. The boy has a 10 year, $100M contract, and that's a lot of value to just write off on principle's sake. I would have done it, but I can see why they didn't. My dream is that after he serves his suspension, his trade value will rise, and we can get a blockbuster Herschel Walker-style trade for him. I realize that elite quarterbacks are rare, but let's face it: the boy had 5 concussions by the age of 27. At 50 sacks a year, he's not going to last the 10 additional years another QB might. And the defense's average age is 33, so we're going to be struggling soon anyway. So my dream for next spring: get a boatload of picks for the creep, rebuild in a hurry, restore the honor of the team, and tell a nation it's safe to come home.