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Newsflash: Ben Roethlisberger Is Not a Good Guy; QB Admits Porn & Booze Habits

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PITTSBURGH, PA - DECEMBER 01: Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger (7) looks at the field in the fourth quarter during the NFL football game between Cleveland Browns and the Pittsburgh Steelers on December 1, 2019 at Heinz Field in Pittsburgh, PA. (Photo by Shelley Lipton/Icon Sportswire)

Speaking at a weekend event for ManUp Pittsburgh, two-time Super Bowl champion Pittsburgh Steelers’ quarterback Ben Roethlisberger made headlines for admitting to struggling with some personal demons. During his interview, the 38-year-old quarterback would touch on struggles with an addiction to pornography and alcohol. The conversation seemed mostly designed as a vehicle to sell the message of Christianity that he uses to cover up the fact that he’s a terrible person and two-time alleged rapist.

What, you thought this was really going to be about him liking porn and alcohol? Who doesn’t? Those are straw-man “struggles” propped up to give him something to talk about overcoming because he can’t talk about the actual terrible things in his life.

Part of the mission statement of ManUp is to “Encourage and teach men to be godly leaders for their families.” The organization is an effort shared by Steelers coach Mike Tomlin, Pirates manager Clint Hurdle and former Steeler Craig Wolfley, working in conjunction with Urban Impact. The goals of the organization seem pure, and they should seriously reconsider having Roethlisberger as a spokesperson.

Speaking virtually due to the restrictions of COVID-19, Roethlisberger said “I’ve fallen as short as anybody. I’ve been addicted to alcohol. I’ve been addicted to pornography, which makes me then not the best husband, not the best father, not the best Christian I can be.” That he doesn’t mention the additional incidents in his life is telling here.

Roethlisberger was accused of rape twice. Which is exactly two more times than most of the “best Christians” I know. In 2009 he allegedly lured a hotel clerk to his room to “check his television” after meeting her and flirting earlier in the day. When she tried to leave his room, the quarterback allegedly blocked her path and forcibly raped her. The case would be settled out of court with no details released. The following year, Roethlisberger would be accused in another incident, this time in Georgia. A 20-year-old woman who had accompanied the quarterback to several bars during the night said that he forcibly raped her after Roethlisberger’s personal security, Anthony Barravecchio, an off-duty cop and undercover DEA agent, plied her with shots and guided her into a bathroom where the quarterback was waiting. Allegedly.

The quarterback would not face criminal charges following protracted investigations with very questionable factors like policemen suddenly “forgetting” meeting witnesses, missing evidence and changing stories. Responding to the 2010 incident, the first cop on scene is reported in findings to have said to Barravecchio “We have a problem, this drunken bitch, drunk off her ass, is accusing Ben of rape.” Which is maybe not the best way to go into an investigation? Eventually the alleged victim would withdraw charges to get herself away from absurd public scrutiny, but made it clear in a statement that she was in no way recanting her accusation or saying the incident didn’t happen.

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“I just felt that I needed to do that,” he said. “I wanted to have a closer walk, a better relationship with Jesus, my wife, my kids, my family — become a better person,” the quarterback said during the ManUp event. Another person he badly wanted to get close to was presidential paramour and part-time porn star Stormy Daniels.

Daniels feels that she was nearly a third (that we know of) victim of the quarterback, an account which she detailed at length in her 2018 book. Which her despicable representative of course used for publicity when the book was coming out.

The unfortunate ties to the buffoon in the White House overshadowed Daniels’ claims against Roethlisberger at the time, but the account reads exactly like every story of every scumbag guy trying to talk or force his way into a drunk girl’s room you’ve ever heard. Daniels’ claimed that while accompanying now-president Donald Trump to a nightclub event in 2006, she was introduced to another alleged sexual predator by the one who brought her to the party.

Daniels would talk to Roethlisberger about winning the Super Bowl and playing football, because collectively their minds have the depth of a fish bowl. Following the chat Roethlisberger gave Daniels his phone number, asking her to call him the next time she was in Pittsburgh. Daniels then got a second number, after calling out the quarterback for having a “ho phone.”

Shortly after, upon announcing that she was heading to her room, the president offered to send someone to escort her and keep her safe. Instead of a paid bodyguard, he offered the services of Roethlisberger, which would be weird if it weren’t incredibly obvious that Trump was “giving” Daniels to him in his mind.

On arriving at the porn star’s room, Daniels claims that Roethlisberger asked to come inside to “see the room” and put his hand on the door and began to push when she said no and started to close the door. As Daniels would write, the encounter would play out with the quarterback asking for a kiss, then begging for a kiss, then not caring that Daniels had said no and that she was there with his friend Trump. Eventually she was able to get the door closed, after which she says Roethlisberger “stood outside, not leaving. Every now and again he’d knock, rapping his knuckles in a line low along the door. ‘Come onnnn’ he repeated in a singsong voice ‘I won’t tell.'”

Daniels would conclude the story saying “I was terrified. I am rarely terrified.” Which, knowing that she’s willingly had sex with Donald Trump, I think we can all believe.

In 2010, following the second rape allegation, Roethlisberger would be ordered to attend “professional behavior evaluation” by the NFL as part of a six-game conduct suspension. The quarterback would allegedly come out of these sessions and the experience as a whole as a new man. But his teammates and the media seem to disagree with the general public image.

In a 2019 survey by The Athletic, 85 NFL players were asked about opposing quarterbacks and which they would least like to have as their quarterback and leader. Roethlisberger finished next-to-last in the poll. Teammates have issues both with Roethlisberger’s past conduct, as well as his approach to leadership, and it seems he should carry at least some of the blame for the rift and eventual departures that were created with star receiver Antonio Brown and star running back Le’veon Bell. Antonio Brown would famously say that the quarterback has “an owner’s mentality.”

Former Steelers teammate Emmanuel Sanders would add his thoughts about the type of teammate that “Big Ben” is.

Roethlisberger has frequently criticized teammates publicly for both their play and their conduct. For his part, the holier-than-thou quarterback says “I think I have earned the right to be able to do that with as long as I have been here,” while not understanding the issue with airing team issues in public. As former Steeler Isaac Redman told Sports Illustrated, most teammates were seeing the quarterback only “in the locker room and on the field,” and then would hear comments in the media that would “rub guys the wrong way. Some stuff should be kept in house. You come to them, you don’t put it out in the public.”

Speaking of an owner’s mentality, there’s also Roethlisberger’s stance on player’s kneeling for racial justice.

“People don’t realize all the time that us athletes, we’re human. We sin like everybody else. I am no different. We make mistakes. We get addicted to things. We sin. We’re human. I think sometimes we get put on this pedestal where we can’t make mistakes,” Roethlisberger would say during the event. In this case, we realize exactly how phony, human and despicable that human is.

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