Brain Damaged Ben?

Irrespective of which he was guilty of anything criminal in the incident for which he wasn't charged last month, Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger is clearly a major asshole, as this Sports Illustrated cover piece reveals in painful detail. That's not necessarily news (plenty of professional athletes are assholes - paging Tiger Woods, Kobe Bryant, Jose Canseco, and Michael Jordan), nor is it something about which I've got much more to say than I already have. However, one of the reporters responsible for the piece, David Epstein, wrote a very interesting sidebar piece exploring the possibility that Roethlisberger's antisocial behavior may be the result of damage to the frontal lobe of his brain. Impulse control problems of the sort Roethlisberger clearly has are consistent with injuries of that sort, and in addition to four documented concussions suffered on the football field, he also sustained serious head injuries in a motorcycle accident in 2006, as the story notes. Obviously, Epstein is no neurologist, and the neurologists he interviews for his story haven't examined Roethlisbeger, so this possibility is mere speculation, but it is intriguing speculation.

From the sad cases of Andre Waters and Mike Webster, it's quite clear that a long career in professional football poses a significant risk of serious and enduring head injury, and while the league has taken steps to increase awareness of the issue, they can't alter the fact that violent collisions between very large men running at full speed are a part of the game. Given that, a certain number of brain injuries are inevitable, and I wonder if at a certain point we won't decide as a society that football, at least as it's played now, is too dangerous to be respectable, a question Malcolm Gladwell explored in a provocative piece in the New Yorker last autumn comparing the sport to dogfighting. I'm not quite ready to ban the game (I love it as much as the next American man), but I am becoming increasingly convinced that fundamental rule changes to make it safer may be imperative. Limiting substitutions is one idea I like - if players had to play both ways and endurance were as important as speed and power, as in similarly physical sports like rugby and ice hockey, smaller physiques would predominate and collisions would entail less force. Furthermore, one of the major points of opposition to sweeping change in any sport - the argument from tradition - wouldn't apply in this case, since football originally was played two ways and if anything, such a reform would be returning the game to its roots. There are a lot of ideas out there (some of which Gladwell notes), and it may be time to start looking into some of them.

In any case, as much as I enjoyed playing football when I was in high school (and I did), I'm glad I quit before it turned my brain to mush.

Fool Me Twice?

Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, who is being accused of sexual assault by a woman he met in an Atlanta nightclub, has admitted to police he had "sexual contact" with her, but denies assaulting her and claims the injuries she sustained were a result of falling and hitting her head. Given that this is not the first such incident for Roethlisberger - he's currently being sued by another woman in regard to a similar accusation - I'm left with only three possible conclusions:

1.)Ben Roethlisberger is extremely unlucky.
2.)Ben Roethlisberger is an idiot.
3.)Ben Roethlisberger is a serial rapist.

(1) seems rather unlikely. Yes, it's true that professional athletes garner a lot of attention from starstruck women, and many of them indulge themselves (just look at Tiger Woods), and yes, it's likewise true that in some cases these women undoubtedly have questionable motives. Nevertheless most athletes manage to go their entire careers without incurring a single allegation of sexual assault, much less two inside a single calendar year. There do seem to be grounds for doubt about the first allegation against Roethlisberger, but a second incident makes it seem somewhat less likely that he's merely had the misfortune of twice being targeted by gold-digging opportunists. This is particularly true since this second woman has filed criminal rather than civil charges and as things stand now does not stand to gain materially from her accusations. If she later attempts to profit from the situation, the calculus obviously changes, but as of right now, one must wonder why she's inclined to bring the police into it if all she did was hit her head on a bathroom stall partition.

(2) seems the most likely to me at this point. There is ample evidence that Roethlisberger is as dumb as a post - this is a guy who insisted he was going to continue to ride his motorcycle without a helmet, even after suffering serious injuries in a crash that could have very well ended his multimillion dollar gig as a star quarterback. So if there's anybody who'd recklessly get himself into a compromising situation with a woman when he's already being sued for sexual misconduct, it might very well be him. Perhaps it will turn out this woman really is after money or notoriety and Roethlisberger, unlike many of his fellow athletes, is too stupid to recognize and avoid such people. Conversely, maybe other celebrities do get themselves involved in such situations but are smart enough to pay up to keep them quiet, and Big Ben isn't. I suppose we'll find out.

(3) is the possibility nobody wants to think about. Obviously, the man is innocent until proven guilty, but having nasty rumors swirling around a high-profile player is a PR problem no professional sports league wants on its hands. It wouldn't surprise me a bit to see NFL commissioner Roger Goodell sanction Roethlisberger somehow, even if nothing comes of the criminal charges.

The whole mess makes me glad I'm not a Steelers fan. Rooting for Michael Vick was bad enough.