Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Apology Accepted, Big Ben! You're the Best!

We heard another attempt at an apology yesterday on SportsCenter. It seems like we are hearing these about once a week these days. The latest was Steelers' Quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, apologizing for being involved in a sex scandal with a 20-year-old college student in Milledgeville, GA. He also thanked the Baldwin County Sheriff's Office for losing the security tapes at the bar...I mean, for the extensive and conclusive investigation.

Can we just stop being surprised when professional athletes do this stuff? It's like being surprised when a dog eats a steak that you left on the floor, or not expecting your car to get stolen when you leave it running in a bad part of town. I'm not saying it's okay, I'm just saying it's bound to happen when we treat these people like gods. It's easy for a guy like me to say you shouldn't sleep with every woman you meet, but that's probably because I don't have beautiful women throwing themselves at me, one after another. Just kidding, yeah I do. I was just being modest.

So now that we know this is going to keep happening, I think I might start a new side-business as a speech writer. Is anybody putting any thought into these speeches? They're all pretty much the same thing. In fact, I think you can find them on Microsoft Word in the Templates section called "Professional Athlete Apology".

In these speeches, you need to start out by saying you won't answer any specific questions, then thank your attorneys and the "Justice" system. Next, apologize to your team, your city, your league, and especially your fans. But don't apologize for what you did, apologize for the distraction that this caused. After that, assure everyone that you will be working harder than ever to prove to your teammates and your fans that you will be a great teammate and an even better role model from here on out.  Finish the speech by thanking everyone listening and by thanking God.

With your content taken care of, it's now time to focus on the delivery.  Based on Big Ben's model, you want to show up with the greasiest, most white-trash haircut you can think of.  And if you think a mullet is the right haircut, you just don't know white trash.  He had his greasy hair slicked back and hanging down to his neck, dripping vegetable oil onto the collar of his shirt.  He didn't shave either.  I'm sure even the blue-collar Pittsburgh fans thought he looked like a slob.  I would imagine the Stinky Pines Trailer Court in Western PA was abuzz yesterday afternoon with talk about how badly Big Ben needed to use a Terrible Towel to start to clean himself up.  When you actually start reading your speech, try as hard as you can to make it sound just like a fifth-grader reading his book report on Superfudge.  That makes it sound way more sincere.


Here's what went down.  Roethlisberger and his posse were in Milledgeville, GA.  I can only speculate as to why they were in a suburb of a suburb of Macon, but I'd say it's a pretty safe bet that they were out trying to find Big Ben some new "No Fear" and "Big Johnson" shirts.  After a long day of shopping, they all went clubbing, where they met up with some really drunk women and posed for a picture with a Milledgeville Police Officer.  One of the girls, a 20-year-old, was especially drunk, and one of Ben's bodyguards escorted her down a hallway to a small bathroom.  Big Ben took over from there and was gone for a few minutes.  More than likely, he was just smiling politely while she insisted she never drank this much, because she was a good Southern girl.  She later made accusations of sexual assault, and the cop doing the initial investigation was the one who posed in the picture with Big Ben.  You can go ahead and draw your own conclusions, but would you let him around your sister?  Because as you can see, Ben is a good guy who acts like a mature millionaire should act.


I don't expect him to be perfect.  I don't even expect him to be a good guy, even though I'd like to see it.  I'm just saying that maybe we shouldn't be so shocked when these guys start hooking up with every woman who either flirts with them or gets black-out drunk around them.

On a related note, it was nice to see Phil Mickelson win the Masters the other day.

2 comments:

  1. can you please blog about Tiger being a spoiled little brat and telling the whole world through a press conference that we won't see the ups and downs on the golf course - him yelling and throwing his clubs - and yet he proceeded to do so right from day 1. You stay classy Tiger.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Oh man that was good! Thanks for the laughs!

    ReplyDelete