Former Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger has a history of opening his mouth when many think he shouldn’t. And I don’t just mean the people who don’t want to hear from him at all. I’m talking about the numerous times over the years he has said things deemed to be controversial, whether they ought to have been or not.
This grand tradition has continued since the launch of his Footbahlin podcast, in the most recent edition of which he had current Steelers quarterback Kenny Pickett on as a guest. During the taping, he acknowledged that there was a part of him that didn’t want to be forgotten as old news in Pickett’s wake and thus was not initially entirely rooting for the new Steelers quarterback’s success.
In spite of the fact that it didn’t take him long to come around and become a Pickett fan, Roethlisberger has been dragged over the coals for his admission, and the sharpest criticism has tended to come from members of the national media with no athletic background. Take convicted criminal Craig Carton, for example, and what he had to say on The Carton Show on Monday.
“Ben Roethlisberger has a reputation for being a very selfish prima donna”, he said. “He apparently came out and said that he rooted against Kenny Pickett. Here’s a lifetime Steeler, going into the Hall of Fame, won multiple Super Bowls. He is retired, and he was still jealous of Kenny Pickett, and he had Kenny on his podcast and said, I’ve got to be honest, I was rooting for Mitchell Trubisky, I wanted you to fail. Like, what the F is wrong with you? You retired! Kenny Pickett didn’t take your job, you retired”.
It’s notable that former NFL wide receiver Greg Jennings was on the show and that, as a former professional athlete, he seemed much more sympathetic to Roethlisberger’s feelings than the professional loudmouth who attempted to bait Jennings into agreeing with him.
“This is the reality. You’re playing a position that you feel like, ‘I can never be replaced. I don’t ever want to be the one that’s now on the outside looking in’”, Jennings said. “The funny thing about sports, maybe it’s just the people that I know, but when you’ve won, and you were one of the last to win, you want to hold onto that. Like, Ben Roethlisberger’s the last quarterback to win in Pittsburgh, so he wants to hold on to that title”.
Carton immediately reframed Jennings’ comments to say that it was “everything that’s wrong with selfish, prima donna athletes”, not that he would have any insight or perspective into that world. Or that he would care. He uses these so-called selfish prima donnas to make a living, one that was profitable enough to help him defraud investors out of nearly $5 million, for which he served little more than a year in prison.
