Apparently Jason Whitlock has fallen off the deep end. I read his column on a regular basis and 9 times out of 10 he and I see eye to eye. For some reason however he has (for at least one column) lost his ever-lovin mind and actually tried to make, that sorry excuse for a man, Ben Roethlisberger out to be a victim of the big bad commissioner of the NFL.
The basis of this opinion stems from an interview that was granted to Peter King of Sports Illustrated by the NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell. On the subject of Big Ben the commish stated that he was unable to find one NFL player, out of dozens, who would come to Big Ben's defense. To Mr. Whitlock this is just the commissioner's way of taking another shot at the Pittsburgh QB right before the Super Bowl. According to Whitlock Big Ben is simply the token white whipping boy for the commissioner so he can show that he is hard on both the black and white athletes in the NFL. Why o' why does it always have to come down to the race card with some people. Jason, I never thought you would stoop so low.
What if perhaps the commissioner is like me, and millions of other football fans around the world who think that Ben got away with one because of his NFL status? The commissioner like many of us had access to the facts of the case against him, and possibly had even more facts then the general public was privy to. But maybe....just maybe he is just telling it like it is, you know Jason that thing you claim to do in your column?
Let's look at the facts of the case. Big Ben was "accused" of sexually assaulting a female party goer in a bathroom at a nightclub in Georgia. I will go ahead and stick with this one case and not even mention that not even a year before he was accused of sexual assault by another female....oops, well anyway. So Big Ben is accused and police are called to the scene. The officer who initially investigates the crime was getting his picture taken with the NFL star just hours before investigating the crime, and had some colorful remarks about the accuser.
According to reports of some of the other people there that night the hero from Steel Town, USA was acting like a first class, grade A, jerk in the Peach State. Plying women with alcohol (including his accuser), "aggressively" hitting on other women, and even one story of a woman who got a picture with him for her boyfriend, who is a fan, only to see the Steeler QB get mad and call her some colorful names once he realized that she wanted nothing more then a picture.
Now all of this could just be good evidence for the fact that Ben is a moron, and just a rude, stuck up piece of trash. However, if you are accused of sexual assault once.....depending on the circumstances it is most likely his word v. her word and those cases are always tough. Accused of sexual assault a second time.....well Ben my friend now you have established what I like to call "a pattern of behavior". Throw in all the other reported behavior from that night and basically what you have is a rich, overrated, horny idiot on the loose who clearly cannot control himself.
Yet charges were dropped due to the fact that the charges "could not be proven beyond a reasonable doubt." Not because the investigation found the accuser to be lying...Not because the charges were found to be false...Not because Big Ben was proven innocent of all charges during the investigation. No simply because there was no credible evidence that the DA felt they could use to get a successful prosecution. Couple this with the fact that they knew Big Ben would have quite the legal team (same lawyer who got Ray Lewis off on his murder charge) at his disposal and short of having video of him in the act, no evidence was going to help secure a successful prosecution. All the DA could do was what he did, make the announcement and release all the details he could about the case so it could be tried in the court of public opinion. If he really thought Big Ben was innocent do you think he would release all the details that he did?
Sadly if this case was about any other average Joe on the street, whether he was white, black, brown, purple, red, orange or any other color I believe the DA would have went forward with the case. Make the accused a star, with a large bank account, and news cameras following every part of the case? Suddenly justice no longer remains blind and other factors, besides the facts of the case, take center stage and are weighed in favor of the accused.
So I say Bravo to the commissioner who helped remind everyone before the Super Bowl that one of the stars of the show was just a short while ago accused of a despicable crime, and even though he is innocent until proven guilty "in a court of law", that does not mean he didn't do anything wrong that night in Georgia. It just means it can't be proven that he did anything wrong. A six game suspension cut down to four was his only punishment. Average Joe on the street could have well been serving four to six years in prison for the same crime. Ben got off easy Jason, so I you will have to excuse me if I don't shed any tears when the commissioner takes "one final potshot" at the Pittsburgh QB. He more then deserves it!
