Roethlisberger: Can't cut him, can't stand him

PITTSBURGH — It's fans like Becky Rickard that Ben Roethlisberger has lost.

The 33-year-old Rickard is a Pittsburgher and a fan of every team in town. She's come out to see the Pittsburgh Pirates play, even though they haven't had a winning season since 1992, when Roethlisberger was just a backyard quarterback.

She should love the Steelers and their six Super Bowl titles, including two under the direction of Roethlisberger. Right?

"I had a Ben jersey and gave it away," said Rickard, who on this night has replaced her expensive, tossed-aside Roethlisberger jersey with a Pirates T-shirt. "We're a proud city and we don't like anything to make us look bad. Ben has tainted what our image is."

Rickard might as well be speaking for many of the 300,000-plus citizens in this clannish Rust Belt town.

Roethlisberger has worn out his welcome in Pittsburgh.

The good will generated by those NFL titles, capped by his memorable last-minute TD pass to Santonio Holmes in the Super Bowl 15 months ago, is all gone. It's been lost in Roethlisberger's night of tearing through a Georgia college town wearing a devil T-shirt, one that ended with an underage college student accusing him of sexual assault in a nightclub bathroom. The case won't be prosecuted, but the quarterback's latest episode of bad behavior has destroyed his reputation in Pittsburgh and beyond, and shamed his team and its highly regarded owners.

And the twist is that while Pittsburgh can't stand him the Steelers can't cut him. At least not soon, given the $50 million the team has spent on Roethlisberger's salary and signing bonuses since 2008.

The fans

As virtually everyone in Pittsburgh knows, this isn't the first time Roethlisberger has found trouble.

He was already the defendant in a Nevada lawsuit, accused of sexually assaulting a hotel employee, when he and his entourage went out partying March 4 in Milledgeville, Ga.

Before that, there was the 2006 motorcycle accident after the first Super Bowl victory, with Roethlisberger getting badly injured while riding helmetless and without a permit.

Now there are hundreds of pages of police reports detailing his boorish actions in Georgia, and an unprecedented six-game NFL suspension (which could be reduced to four games) for a player not charged — much less convicted — of a crime.