Ben Roethlisberger is an American professional football quarterback who has a net worth of $100 million. Also known as “Big Ben,” Roethlisberger is most …Net Worth: $100 MillionDate of Birth: Mar 2, 1982 (39 years old)Salary: $23 MillionHeight: 6 ft 5 in (1.96 m)
Thank you, Ben Roethlisberger… for being a real jackass
If you watched Monday night’s game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Cleveland Browns, you might be under the mistaken impression that Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger — playing in his final home game, unless he predictably reneges yet again on his reported intentions to hang it up — is beloved by all. Steelers fans wrote “THANK YOU BEN” on very large placards, proving that they had at last mastered spelling the name BEN after 18 seasons. ESPN gave him the full “This Is Your Life” treatment, complete with custom stat animations, fawning commentary, clips of Roethlisberger from days when his head wasn’t quite as fat and endless graphics of his current fat, annoying head in between every play. You might believe, given the presentation, that this night was an appropriate goodbye for one of the NFL’s greatest players.
You would be wrong, because Ben Roethlisberger sucks. God, he sucks. Just THINKING about him sucks. I wish he’d never been born.
But born he was. Therefore we must, as a society, grapple with this man’s enduring legacy of being a tactless, selfish, belligerent dickhead. He was suspended by the NFL after being accused of rape in 2010. The same year, another woman named Andrea McNulty came forward to Sports Illustrated and accused Roethlisberger of raping her after he called her up to his Lake Tahoe hotel room to have her fix his television. McNulty claimed that when she reported the assault to her boss, the boss threatened to fire her. (Roethlisberger wasn’t charged in the 2010 case, and settled a lawsuit with McNulty in 2011.) The SI expose separately reported that Roethlisberger frequently harassed service workers, dined and dashed on multiple occasions and displayed poor sportsmanship even during pick-up basketball games. He also crashed his motorcycle in 2006 while not wearing a helmet, swore he’d always wear a helmet afterward, didn’t, and then flipped off journalists who caught him riding free and easy.
The early history of Roethlisberger, papered over by “Monday Night Football” analyst Brian Griese under the euphemism of “mistakes,” is why no one can stand this bastard. But before you scream “not news!” at me in an insufferable yinzer accent, you should know that Roethlisberger has done plenty since then to keep any and all hatred of him burning with great justification and equal vigor.
There was, of course, the time he played wingman to Donald Trump and set him up with adult film star Stormy Daniels before allegedly coming onto her himself. Daniels said of the encounter, “I was terrified. I am rarely terrified.” I believe her on both counts. There’s the charity Roethlisberger runs that partly funded a police dog that ended up biting a small child. There was the time Roethlisberger’s own kicker publicly accused him of fumbling on purpose to show up his offensive coordinator (Roethlisberger ran through coordinators like I run through baby wipes). There was the time Roethlisberger publicly dumped on his own running back for holding out for better pay, one of MANY occasions he didn’t hesitate to s–t on a teammate to the press. There’s the fact that he allegedly has a gray penis. And there’s the fact that Roethlisberger was such a galactic prick that even certain Steelers fans — who will forgive ANY Steeler, even Franco Harris — turned on him.
A Steelers send-off unlike any other: Ben Roethlisberger’s return in 2021 worth it for one shining night
The game looked hideous at times, elegant at others. Cover-your-eyes bad football played by both sides for stretches would erupt into a splendid series of plays and moments that took your breath away.
All the while, the party atmosphere at Heinz Field built toward the kind of dramatic end-of-game crescendo that hasn’t been witnessed there since the 2008 and 2010 AFC Championship Game victories by the Steelers.
Pittsburgh’s 26-14 victory over the Cleveland Browns will not register among the Steelers’ finest in Heinz Field, yet it will be remembered forever by those who saw it.
Never has one Steelers player gone out the way Ben Roethlisberger did Monday night. Not Terry Bradshaw, not Joe Greene, not Franco Harris, not Jack Lambert, not Troy Polamalu. None of them was afforded the opportunity to take the kind of final home bow that was accorded Big Ben.
All of those players except maybe Greene did not even know it was his final home game when it occurred. The closest was Rocky Bleier’s finale at Three Rivers Stadium on Dec. 14, 1980, when everyone knew he was retiring and he received a thundering ovation after he ran for his final touchdown. But it was nothing like this.