Let's set the record straight here. We do not approve of Ben's antics. Did he not learn anything from what happened to Tiger? You can be at the top of your sport, but that doesn't make you invincible. Dude needs to keep it in his pants. Period. We're not saying he's guilty, but he is known as a womanizer who sleeps around. And when you play with fire, you're going to get burned. He has a reputation amongst Pitt and Duquesne students (but not CMU students because they never leave the library) of being a bit of a skeezball. With that kind of reputation, well, it's not surprising that things like these accusations would come up. Honestly, is it too much to ask for a 28-year old who is going to be paid $55 million in the next 5 years to exercise a little self-restraint and to be accountable for his actions?
From a business perspective, Ben is due some huge money over the next few years. He is due $8.5 million in 2010, then $11.6 million per year from 2011-2014. Yikes. Obviously, the Rooney's aren't too happy with these shenanegins, and likely put their foot down with Ben (they had a meeting with him this past week).
Should the Rooney's decide to terminate Ben's contract because of his conduct, well, you really couldn't blame them. We believe that the Rooney's likely gave him some kind of ultimatum, something to the extent of "If you pull another stunt like this, you're out." Obviously, this is just speculation. On top of all that, who knows what the NFL will do. If they decide to step in and suspend Ben, well, that's their right and you can't say he didn't do anything to deserve it.
From a football perspective, it sucks. That's about the long and the short of it. Ben is the best quarterback we've had here since Bradshaw. Anyone who tells you the team could keep going without him needs hit with a stick. Obviously, those people haven't been paying attention to the incompetent play-calling that gets our QBs destroyed. If Peyton Manning was our quarterback, he would have been sacked about 800 times last season alone. Ben's mobility and ability to make things happen on broken plays is the only thing that keeps Arians' offense moving.
All that being said, to suggest the Steelers should draft a quarterback to "replace Ben" at the top half of this draft is asinine at best and a criminal offense at worse. To suggest that that quarterback should be Tim Tebow reaches a level of stupidity only before seen in Pirates General Managers.
This article, posted on Deadspin (basically the TMZ of sports web sites) suggests just that. The worst part of the article is that they site an article from the Bleacher Report like it's a legitimate source. Finding legitimate articles on the Bleacher Report is like finding a girlfriend from the classified ads in the City Paper.
But we're not here to talk about the article. The rationale for the Steelers drafting Tebow is like suggesting the School for the Blind should invest in a PS3 rather than books. What we want to talk about is the comments. This might be the greatest comments section in the history of the internet. Here are a few excerpts:
This would be a great pickup, since we already know that Jesus Loves the Steelers.
We brought in our resident helmet expert to deal with this one.
We can't argue with this one. It's obviously much harder to win an NCAA title than a Super Bowl. Tebow could teach Ben all about getting it done in one-and-done scenarios where the media selects you to play in the Championship game and you don't have to play your way through a series of opponents to get there.
So here's the deal: obviously Ben did something stupid. But that doesn't excuse anyone from trying to one-up him by posting something even stupider (we haven't even talked about how stupid people who want to draft Taylor Mays are). Of course, this is the internet, so you'll always get the people who think stars should be traded. Like the people who say the Pens should trade Crosby or Malkin. Sorry, they can't hear you over their Stanley Cup ring.
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