Pittsburgh is a hockey town just as much as it is a football town, and worlds collided on Saturday evening when two Pittsburgh Steelers football greats led the puck drop for a college hockey game between Robert Morris and Miami of Ohio.
RMU Men’s Hockey shared a video of the puck drop on X.
Notice how Roethlisberger and Keisel are still competing to this day, as they were bickering over who’s pick hit the ground first.
Ben Roethlisberger of course went to Miami of Ohio in college and was drafted out of there by the Steelers in the first round of the 2004 NFL Draft. I don’t think Keisel has any connections to RMU, which is situated in Moon township near the Pittsburgh airport, but he still participated in the event. I wonder if the pair will be spotted at Sunday Night Football tomorrow against the New York Jets. It is alumni night for the Super Bowl IX team, so maybe some of the legends from the more recent Super Bowl teams will make appearances as well.
Keisel was a defensive end that was with the team from 2002 to 2014 after being drafted by the team in the seventh round of the 2002 NFL Draft. He had quite the career for a seventh-round pick and won two Super Bowls with Roethlisberger. At one point, they were both team captains.
It is weird seeing the pair without large beards. At one point, it looked like they were competing to see who could have the biggest beard possible. Most of you will remember the amazing Steelers twitter challenge a few years back when they grew Keisel’s beard in photoshop for every 1,000 likes on the tweet, which ended in this:
Keisel used to shave his beard every year for charity.
Along with other members of those 2000s teams, Ben Roethlisberger and Brett Keisel still hunt together from time to time. I would imagine they are also pretty competitive in that setting, too.
