Steel City Jim

I'm back in the Burgh after a couple of months in the sunny, but very cool south. Being home gives me a much closer feel for the Pittsburgh sports scene, and some things have become clearer, or muddier, depending on your perspective.

In Pittsburgh, it's always football season. Well, almost. The Penguins clinched a playoff spot this week. But that was forgone. Sometimes, a baseball team might make a good showing in spring training, only to fall apart when the opening bell rings. But the Pirates have the worst spring training record in the National League and their play only indicates that it will be a long summer. Even the pitchers the Pirates were relying on to make a decent showing have been shelled of late. And, it's spring training, when the pitchers are supposed to be ahead of the batters.

Just when I thought I had a good handle on how the Steeler brass thinks, they turned the tables on me. In the past, they have been quite inactive in the free agency market. At most, they pick up a couple of guys late in the process at a cheap price to fill a gap here and there. But they had a different plan this year. For one thing, they realized that they had to shore up a woefully inadequate special teams situation. Last year teams returned kicks for more yardage that I can count. And that Cribbs shredded them for at least three touchdowns.

So, they went out and got a couple of special teams demons. With the new offensive line coach from Buffalo, they were able to identify and sign an offensive lineman who played at Buffalo. Then, they signed a wide receiver named Battles, probably because they have finally given up on Limus Sweed. But then they turned around and brought back Randle El who is also a wide receiver. Bye-bye, Limus. Finally, they brought back Larry Foote, a linebacker, who left last year for Detroit. One year there was enough to cure him. He rushed back to the waiting arms of Tomlin and company. My thinking is that all these signings allows them to focus on glaring needs at cornerback, defensive line, offensive line and linebackers in the draft. Not a bad plan.

But now the Roethlisberger episode rears its ugly head. I was pretty convinced that Ben's incident in Las Vegas was a matter of exaggeration. I know that women fall over athletes, and I chalked up that

matter to an overzealous woman who felt abandoned. In fact, evidence led me to confirm that. But now the second such situation in less than a year has me scratching my head about this guy. What has been reported hereabouts is that Ben went to a bar in rural Georgia with an entourage of buddies and proceeded to do some strong drinking. He then lured a young woman into a bathroom, locked the door and had three of his buddies guard the door. What occurred in the bathroom is anybody's guess, and the girl did have an alcohol content in her blood of over .2. So, she wasn't exactly an innocent bystander in all this herself. But what does it say about a 6-5, 250-pound football player, worth in excess of $100 million, locking himself in a bar bathroom with a 20-year old drunk female college student with three goons keeping watch on the outside?

So, now Ben doesn't report to OTAs this week at the Steeler training facility. This isn't a big deal because all they do is run around and lift weights anyway. And, it's voluntary. But all of a sudden we are hearing that while the Steelers, having signed Charlie Batch as a third QB, and grooming Dennis Dixon as the second QB, are now looking hard at some quarterback prospects in the draft. One is from Central Michigan, one from Ole Miss and one from Cincinnati. Maybe, just maybe, Ben won't be here in 2010. He could be suspended. He could be in jail. And it just could be that the Steelers, despite the vast amount of money they have invested in him, simply don't want him around anymore.

My guess is that with all the foregoing, Ben will trot out on opening day as the Steeler quarterback. As a football quarterback and a Steeler I will be rooting for him. But I'm not planning to have dinner with him anytime soon, and I'm surely not going to fix him up with a respectable young woman either.