I love Steeler fans, I really do. They are second-to-none when it comes to passion, knowledge of the game and supporting their team. Steeler fans I've met on the street, in bars, at games have all been like brothers to me. It's an awesome bond. 

But at the same time, they have frustrated me to no end the last few offseasons during the many legal battles the Steelers players have waged. The reaction to each crime hasn't been based on what the player did, but rather a bunch of other unrelated factors. The team has been guilty of this too. We have witnessed nonstop hypocrisy for three offseasons and people are still "shocked" that a Steelers player would get into trouble.  Let's look back on three specific players and see how their controversial actions were received by fans and the Steelers front office...

Every time an email arrives from TMZ in our inbox, I have come to realize that shit is about to hit the fan. Sadly, it has happened a few times in recent years with Jeff Reed, Santonio Holmes and Ben Roethlisberger. Add Hines Ward to that list as of this morning. 

Ward was arrested for DUI in DeKalb County, Georgia early this morning. There aren't many details about the incident out there yet, but this is another black eye on the Steelers and especially hard to swallow knowing it was Ward of all people.

As far as the NFL coming down on Ward, I wouldn't expect him to miss any games, but then again, you never really know. Rey Maualuga was arrested for DUI in January 2010 and didn't receive a fine or suspension. Ward is a much more popular player and it is always possible Goodell will make an example of him, as he has been wont to do with the Steelers. 

Speaking of the Steelers, they have had a major off-the-field incident in each of the last three summers now and every time it involves a star player on the team. There is the false sense among the fan base that the Steelers operate under some higher standard of morality than other teams and I've been writing for years that it isn't true. How many arrests will it take for that stereotype to leave the fan base? 

And I hate to play devil's advocate, but this driving under the influence is arguably worse than anything Santonio Holmes ever did and Steeler fans started calling for his head immediately. The Rooney's also found his transgressions bad enough to trade him away. I've got a feeling Ward won't see the same fate. 

I'm so frustrated that I have to start writing about this kind of thing again. All I want is one summer to talk football and not all of this garbage.  

UPDATE: New, longer post on all of this and how it ties in to other Steelers incidents in recent years.  

I'm a huge football fan in general, but I've always had an especially big interest in high school ball. You can probably blame it on growing up in western Pennsylvania. I know I'm not the only one that still watches the WPIAL and PIAA championship games on TV despite graduating high school a while ago. 

One thing I always wanted to do was map out which state all of the current Steelers played their high school football at (I'm also really into maps!). As boring as the lockout can be, it at least gives us a little bit of time to work on some other projects.

I spent some time mapping out where all of the 2010 Steelers played high school football and added in the yet-to-be-signed 2011 draft picks as well. Not included was Shaun Suisham who grew up in Canada. Texas and Florida, not surprisingly were the most well represented states. Pennsylvania held it's own with three players hailing from the Pittsburgh area (Ryan Mundy, Morty Ivy, Charlie Batch).  

Aside from playing lots of wiffle ball and eating my weight in hamburgers over the 4th of July weekend, I also finished reading one of the must-read sports books of the summer -- Those Guys Have All The Fun: Inside the World of ESPN by James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales. It is a great read for anybody interested in sports media or journalism. 

The unique thing about Those Guys Have All The Fun is that the majority of it is told in first person by current and former ESPN employees. Each chapter starts off with a brief intro by Miller and Shales and then dives right into first person accounts of everything from reaction to the creepy Erin Andrews hotel photos to Sportscenter anchors. The first-person writing style keeps the book moving and offers a glimpse into the heads of many of the famous ESPN personalities. 

A few passages of the book are extra interesting for Pittsburgh fans. There's a lengthy section on ESPN's lack of reporting on the lawsuit against Ben Roethlisberger filed in Nevada during July 2009. If you remember that dreaded month (who doesn't?), ESPN was literally the last outlet to publish the news about Roethlisberger. The company cited its policy that it doesn't report civil lawsuits against players, however that hadn't prevented the Worldwide Leader from covering civil lawsuits against Pacman Jones, Roberto Alomar, et al in the past. 

Here is the money quote about the lack of reporting on the Roethlisberger civil suit from the book:

"...if Mark Shapiro (former Executive Vice President of Programming at ESPN) had been there, that thing would have been covered right away. Unless he had a fucking concussion, Mark would have been all over it...then another thing happens with [Roethlisberger] and makes you look look really, really stupid. You can't do that. The guy's got a problem, and they just don't want to deal with it. It's nuts." - Peter Bonventre (ESPN writer)

Several other ESPN staffers defended the decision not to report on the lawsuit and said the decision to remain silent had nothing to do with Roethlisberger's ESPY appearance or the network's relationship with the NFL. 

Keith Olbermann details how he broke the story of Mario Lemieux's retirement in 1997 due to Hodgkin's. Olbermann learned of the retirement through a source in Lemieux's circle and said "you could almost hear the wind being sucked out of Bristol, Connecticut, by everbody gasping, especially in Pittsburgh. To drop a bombshell like that on people was a privilege and a great thrill." Yeah, something tells me Pens fans didn't feel the same way when they heard the news...

As a blogger, one of my favorite sections was hearing ESPN personalities talk about which blogs they enjoy reading. Both Bob Ley and Rece Davis enjoy Deadspin and Bloguin's own Awful Announcing. Ley called Deadspin "wet-your-pants funny." 

The book is heavy reading and a little slow at times, but the perfect read for a locked out NFL fan during a lazy weekend of vacation. Lots of good stuff from guys like Beano Cook and Bill Simmons and it is interesting to see how sleazy and drama-filled ESPN really is.

You can check out the book on Amazon.  

The NFL Network aired the finale of their top 100 players of 2011 series last night. Steelers SS Troy Polamalu finished 6th in the players-only voting.

Those ahead of Polamalu were as follows: 

5. Ed Reed

4. Ray Lewis

3. Adrian Peterson

2. Peyton Manning

1. Tom Brady

I have a few thoughts on this list. First off, you can't emphasize enough how meaningless something like this is. All that matters to most players is winning Super Bowls. This is merely something fun to talk about.

There is obviously no shame in being ranked behind any of those players. All but Peterson have already guaranteed their spots in Canton and Peterson is well on his way.

All that said, I do have a few gripes. From my understanding, the players were specifically to rate their peers on how good they are currently. If that is the case, there are a handful of middle linebackers currently better than Lewis. However, looking at the full list of 100 it is clear that the voters did take a players past into consideration and I have always wrote that I believe Ray Lewis is the best middle linebacker ever to play the game. While he isn't the 4th best football player in 2011, it is hard to get upset anytime he gets an accolade.

There is sure to be lots of debate on wheter or not Reed should have been higher than Polamalu. 

The two are very similar players. The common criticisms of Polamalu's game (overaggressive, invisible at times, gets beat in coverage) can all be applied to Reed's game too. Reed has had a better career overall, but has had more years to do so. Here's a look at their numbers over the last three seasons combined:

My admittedly biased view is that Polamalu is the better player right now, but, as I mentioned earlier, history definitely played a big role in the voting so I'm not too upset about Reed being ranked so highly as he is one of the best players ever to line up at safety. 

There are things worth getting worked up over and this isn't one of them. It was a fun series to watch, though. 

-B- TribeLive Radio had a good 30 minute interview with Ike Taylor, who is set to become an unrestricted free agent once the lockout ends. The interview was pretty wide ranging and covered a lot of topics. Some of the more interesting ones:

- Taylor only took a week off after the Super Bowl before he started working out again. His daily workout looks something like this:
1.5 mile trail run (warmup)
Run through 40-yard sand pit
2 sets of resistance training
More cardio stuff
7 position-specific drills

- Taylor said he is specifically working on his hands this offseason. He's playing lots of ping-pong and doing a bunch of "small things" to improve his hand-eye coordination. 

- He "strongly" believed that the NFL would have a season. He said a season-long lockout would hurt the economy and the fans.

- Taylor said James Farrior is the most underrated linebacker in the league. "If you put his tape on...I like James Farrior over any linebacker in the year." 

- On which team he will be playing for in 2011: "Wherever I land, I land."  

- Taylor said he wants to be in Pittsburgh, but was very non-commital and said he'll play wherever and that "both sides need to agree." You could read into this as him readying for a big payday (and maybe he is), but it would be a bad negotiation move for him to say Pittsburgh is the only place he will play. We'll just have to wait and see. If Taylor doesn't come back, though,  the Steelers secondary is going to be a disaster next season. 


-B- Our brothers-in-arms at The Steelers n'at posted their own version of NFL realignment. They went with four, 8-team divisions and paired the Steelers with the Ravens, Bills, Patriots, Giants, Jets, Eagles and Redskins. A loaded division with lots of big market teams. Would be fun as well. Check out his full realignment plan over at their blog. 

-B- Pro Football Focus, which is a must read these days, ranked the NFL quarterbacks from 2008-2010. Ben Roethlisberger ended up in fifth behind Manning, Rodgers, Brees and Rivers. Brady wasn't in the list as he missed nearly the entire 2008 season.  

-B- In a bizarre quote, Willie Colon's agent said that the Steelers haven't been in touch with him in three years and says "that is how they do business." I wouldn't expect Colon to be back.  

This post comes totally from out in left field, as the NFL's current divisional structure seems to work fine, but with heated talks of realignment in both the MLB and NHL, it is an idea that keeps popping into my head. 

Travel is much less of an issue in the NFL than in the NHL or MLB. NFL teams are traveling to one destination a week 8 times. That is a total of 16 flights over the course of a regular season. My best guess with no research at all is that baseball players probably take around 60 and hockey players 35 or so (those might not even be close). A west coast trip for a baseball team or a western swing through Canada for a hockey franchise might be as travel intense as an entire NFL season is. 

So, keep in mind while reading this that realignment is not an important issue in the NFL landscape. These are just the kinds of posts that get written during prolonged lockouts. 

I immediately abolished the current conferences and divisions and focused on two main things during my realignment: travel and rivalries. While I wrote above that travel doesn't mean much in the current NFL, it would unfair for the Jaguars to be in a division with Seattle, San Francisco and Oakland, for example. I also tried to keep some of the best rivalries together in the same division.

There are no conferences. 

The 8 division winners make the playoffs plus the next 2 teams with the best record, regardless of division. Tiebreaker will be head to head, then divisional record. 

Without further ado, here are the new divisions...

Only three running back in the NFL had more carries than Rashard Mendenhall in 2010 -- Michael Turner, Steven Jackson and Arian Foster. Mendenhall's 324 carries are the most for a Steeler back in one season since Willie Parker's 337 in 2006 and the second most since 2000, when Jerome Bettis carried the ball a remarkable 355 times. 

Running the ball a lot with one running back isn't always a bad thing. Bettis is a great example of this. He was big, powerful and durable. His backbreaking 3-yard runs moved the chains and won dozens of games during his Steeler career. But the NFL is much different now than it was in 2000. The league has transformed from a run-heavy league to a more open, pass-first mentality. 

That is true for the Steelers, as well. Running the ball is still important to the team, but with Ben Roethlisberger at the helm, there's no reason the Steelers shouldn't rely mostly on a passing attack. Rule changes in recent years have made it a lot easier on quarterbacks and receivers. The Steelers have one of the top quarterbacks in the game and a group of young, talented receivers anchored by a Hall of Fame veteran in Hines Ward. 

With all that in mind, does it make any sense to run Rashard Mendenhall 300+ times in a season? I don't think so. Jump it for graphs, a look back at the Steelers rushing distribution since 2000 and three reasons why the Steelers have no business giving Mendenhall so many carries. 

No. 

Five or six times over the past few months, I've sat down and tried to pen my thoughts on the latest news about the NFL lockout. Every time I've failed. It's not that I wouldn't be upset if there is no 2011 season or that I don't pay attention to the news. I would be pretty bored and certainly upset if there was no professional football to watch this fall. But unlike everything else I write about on this site, I simply cannot get passionate about the NFL lockout. 

I've never had much interest in the business side of sports. The NFL at this point isn't true sport as much as it is a for-profit business. There isn't anything necessarily wrong with that, but all I really care to read and talk about is what happens on the football field, not in a board room or courthouse. 

Like a lot of fans, I feel left out by the whole lockout process this summer. A bunch of stiffs in suits are arguing over amounts of money that 95% of NFL fans will never even sniff of having in their own bank accounts. You have the filthy rich owners arguing with the filthy rich players over money (I know it isn't quite as simple as that, but that is the foundation of the whole lockout). Meanwhile, the average fan who is responsible for building the NFL's brand and for lining the pockets of both sides faces the prospect of a long, cold fall and winter without football. 

It doesn't seem very fair. When the Steelers win a game or sign a free agent or do anything football related, I the fan at least feel like maybe I played a little role in that success. I'm emotionally invested in the football franchise and spend a few hours every week living and dying with what happens with the Steelers. 

I don't get that seem feeling with injunctions and motions and whatever hell else is going on with the lockout. I feel deserted and don't really care to invest much time in a legal battle that will end with both parties making even more money in the end whenever they finally decide enough is enough.