Traina Thoughts: Ben Roethlisberger Embarrassed HImself With Ridiculous Interview
1. If not enjoying last night's Steelers-Bengals game makes me a big snowflake, than so be it. But watching players get stretchered off the field because of vicious hits does not make a football game better. It's not entertaining. It's not amusing. It's not exciting. I see people say fans watch for the big hits. One, that's bull. Two, there's a difference between a big hit and trying to inflict injury on someone. The hits were what they were, though. It's up to you to decide how you feel about a game spinning out of control like that.
What I found just as distasteful as what took place on the field was Ben Roethlisberger's postgame interview with Lisa Salters on ESPN. His teammate, Ryan Shazier, was taken to a hospital because of a serious back injury. Another teammate, JuJu Smith-Schuster, almost turned Vontaze Burfict into a sympathetic figure after he cheap-shotted him and then walked over him while he was injured and down on the ground and Antonio Brown almost got decapitated while making a touchdown catch.
But Roethlisberger, who has been known not to use good judgment in the past, chalked all this nonsense up to "AFC North football." Salters actually gave Roethlisberger a chance to redeem himself after his foolish answer and he just doubled down.
What a cringeworthy tough-guy routine from Roethlisberger. God forbid he would've been honest and said, "Well, things got out of control. We need to clean it up." Instead, he decided to give an enormously stupid answer. Who cares if guys can't move or walk or have their brains scrambled. We play in the tough conference!
How awful is Roethlisberger? He repeated the idiotic "AFC North football" line a second time at the end of his interview with Salters.
Pathetic.
2. Twitter says this was the most retweeted athlete tweet of 2017.
3. New Arizona State football coach, Herm Edwards, who as Jets head coach, had to hire a guy named Dick Curl to tell him how many timeouts he had during games (true story), doesn't seem to know his new team is named the Sun Devils.
4. The Grizzlies snapped an 11-game winning streak last night, so Marc Gasol dropped an f-bomb on TV during his postgame interview.
5. J.J. Watt, who has been sidelined for months with a knee injury, came to New York yesterday so he could accept his Sports Illustrated Sportsperson of the Year award tonight, but, really, it's all about the cane.
6. The Thunder held their yearly holiday shopping spree for local families yesterday and one girl could not contain her emotions when she learned that Russell Westbrook would be her shopping partner.
7. Are you guys playing this daily HQ Trivia game? It takes over the entire SI.com office every day at 3 p.m. ET and yesterday, one of our writers, Jack Dickey actually won, but Hot Clicks writer Andy Gray was not really impressed.
8. RANDOM WRESTLING VIDEO OF THE DAY: In case you missed Monday Night Raw last night, Matt Hardy is officially Woken and Broken.
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