Slime Bowl XXL

Apart from the Steelers losing Super Bowl XXX and a few AFC Championship Games, I'd be hard-pressed to find a worse day in franchise history. It amazes me how the two most critical players from Super Bowl XLIII -- Ben Roethlisberger to Santonio Holmes in the corner of the endzone -- both got into such serious trouble in the offseason. By now, we all know the (alleged) stories, so I won't get into them again.

But we awoke this morning to news that the Steelers had traded Holmes to the N.Y. Jets for a fifth round draft pick. That's all a Super Bowl MVP is worth these days? Actually, that price seems way above market value considering Sanantone's frequent run-ins with the law and his Twitter followers. He told one Twitterer (or is it Tweeter?) to "go drink the worst thing you can drink and kill yourself." That's one way to keep a loyal fanbase. And now he's been suspended for the first four games in 2010 due to a second violation of the NFL's substance abuse police. Apparently, Sanantone likes to "wake n' bake" at his crib. Good riddance to that spoiled idiot.

Amazingly, that wasn't even the biggest headline on Monday. Instead, we were all waiting to hear whether a Georgia prosecutor would file charges against Big Ben after a 20-year-old college student suggested he raped her in a bar bathroom. Although the prosecutor declined to press charges for lack of concrete evidence, his vivid and disgusting details of the incident that occurred in a 5-by-5 foot bathroom made me want to vomit. I'm wondering if public backlash against Roethlisberger might be more ferocious than felony rape charges.

However, District Attorney Fred Bright had a good suggestion for Roethlisberger that both he and his teammates should follow: "Grow up ... You need to be a role model for your team, your city, the NFL. You can do better."

I'll second that.