RALLY POINT

“The commissioner’s decision to suspend me speaks clearly that more is expected of me. I am accountable for the consequences of my actions. Though I have committed no crime, I regret that I have fallen short of the values instilled in me by my family,”

Roethlisberger said in the statement…

I like this quotation from big Ben Roethlisberger, especially the portion I bolded. And it’s not a backhanded sort-of sarcasm through which I malign a public figure. I genuinely like the quote because at face value there is a core recognition that no matter what loopholes exist absolving me of guilt, I “sandbagged” this one. It’s like when people applauded my B when I knew I could have gotten an A. Even worse, it’s like the papers I got A’s on in college when I knew I had written them only hours earlier loading them full of lofty vocabulary to throw professors or their TAs a Red Herring. Ben like humans everywhere struggled, no doubt, with his quick success, fame and literal fortune. But there is a refreshment in hearing an icon, even if only due to brokenness, admit that, “Hey, I should be better than this because I was raised better than this.”

Fall from graces often precede a prodigal son-like return to core values. Esteeming the development of the WHOLE athlete is usually ridiculed as the stuff of idealism as if to suggest that Ben or Tiger are anomalies, rare instances of being caught that in no way necessitate a stoppage of immoral behavior. It was on the radio the other day during “The Herd”, Colin Cowherd’s morning show on 710 ESPN. The subject was drafting a character guy in the NFL instead of looking purely at whether or not a guy can give you the goods on the field. The conversation definitely favored the goods over the character as if the two were mutually exclusive. And maybe right now they are but why is that? Could it be because when a great talent is discovered, he/she is coddled and paraded as super human? Could it be that many great talents start out as character/performance guys only to have character stripped from them because the “handlers” deem it superfluous…I mean unnecessary (college vocab coming out). See, maybe the Ben, the Tiger, the Allen Iverson, etc. we see today isn’t the real guy but merely a portion of him who has been taught to cater to one component, the one the industry values most.