Generally speaking, athletes do not make the best — and frequently not even good — role models. Would that veterinarians and cancer researchers topped all lists.
Playing a game is not particularly important; it doesn’t win any victories for humanity; but it does catapult players to society’s center stage. Especially this one’s. And impressionable kids in America’s celebrity-lionizing culture will always be impressionable kids.
Cue Ben Roethlisberger.
By virtue of being the quarterback of the Super Bowl champion Pittsburgh Steelers, he is a major marquee name and a de facto role model. By virtue of being a helmet-less motorcycle rider, he is a major doofus. He also had been – prior to his recent accident — an undeniable traffic distraction on the streets of Pittsburgh, where no one is more easily recognized these days.
Fortunately, Roethlisberger survived his run-in with a car.
He will play another day and continue to be a high-profile role model to a bunch of kids who can only vicariously relate to a world class professional athlete. But by donning a helmet the next time he mounts a motorcycle – or by dismounting permanently – he will have gone where few famous athletes this side of Pat Tillman will ever go.
To a place where hero-worshipers can actually identify with their heroes. It’s time for Big Ben to take one for the real home team.
And who knows, such a prudent act could even help reverse the mindless trend of states repealing helmet laws. The number of “unhelmeted” deaths in Florida, for example, has risen from 22 in 1999 – before the helmet-law repeal — to 250 in 2004.