He’s acted like a total idiot, but I don’t see how yet another non-event (from months before this latest one) means he is spraling out of control. It sounds like a consistent pattern of being stupid, possibly with a side of giving people an opportunity to try to get something from him.
The woman who is suing him in Vegas appears to be making it up. From what I read in the early stages of that case, it was very hard to believe she was raped. The woman in Georgia didn’t want charges pressed against him and was so drunk she didn’t know what happened. In the end there wasn’t evidence he did anything. And here’s a third case where a lawyer says a potential client told him about a similar situation but she didn’t go forward with it either. Since the league has to be embarrassed by this, I wouldn’t be surprised if he gets suspended. Compared to DUIs and the other kinds of things that have drawn similar suspensions in the past, it’s a little iffy, but the NFL doesn’t have to explain it to anyone.
Maybe he’s not “spiraling out of control” but this is certainly bothersome. Like you mention, it establishes some kind of a pattern. Maybe its only a pattern of stupidity, maybe its a pattern of aggressive sexual predation and alcohol abuse.
I mentioned it in the NFL thread…this whole “Ben and his bodyguards and the VIP room at the club” setup he seems to have going on looks like a preconceived system for seducing young, intoxicated women. And for it to be all hush hush.
Its just weird and creepy that an NFL star QB can’t get laid without all the accoutrements and the posse. Or feels that he needs to do it this way, if in fact that’s what’s going on. It seems to be.
I do think that he’s going to get suspended now, if for nothing other than embarrassing the league and his team by continually being stupid about his clubbing/women/drinking.
Yeah, my guess is that Goodell will suspend him for 2 games and the Steelers for 1 game themselves.
You have to wonder about his contract. I know that there are often ‘morality clauses’ in them or at least there used to be.
Maybe the player’s union has made these clauses a thing of the past, I just don’t know.
Anybody here who actually knows anything about what kinds of clauses might be in a modern NFL player’s contract?
I mean, MY contract has a morality clause, but it also includes a non-compete clause and probably a Santa clause as well (dang fine print!) so that isn’t much help.
For the record, I am NOT an NFL player nor do I pretend to be one on the Internet in order to seduce young, intoxicated women.
Yeah, the first one was definitely bullshit* – but I think it’s pretty hard to brush off the other two. Ugh.
Did anyone see his press conference? It was so obvious that he was reading off of a piece of paper, and that he didn’t even give a shit about what he was saying.
*Her coworkers all said she was basically bragging about sleeping with him the next day.
Something definitely happened, the question is if he did anything wrong. In this Georgia case I guess he was involved in a situation where there was alcohol and a minor, so that’s iffy. In the instance FoieGrasIsEvil mentioned, there was no suit or charges and the woman was about his age. And the one with the lawsuit, like we both said, is crap. So the reason for the suspension would be, “uh, stop that, it looks bad.”
But the “conveniently erased security tapes” from the 2nd alleged instance would at least show whether or not the club and/or Ben was involved in serving a “minor” in terms of alcohol consumption. She was 20…not old enough to drink, and if that came out during the investigation, it would certainly taint testimony from Ben, his “bodyguards/security entourage” and the club itself.
Sadly, they mysteriously were overwritten within days of the investigation, even when I know for a fact that security tapes from a DVR-based system with multiple cameras are generally set up to record close to a month’s worth of coverage before the system automatically starts recording over it.
As a Bengals fan, the sadistic part of me is of course enjoying Ben squirming. Fuck, even Bradshaw has come out and said that they don’t like each other and that Ben needs to improve his decision-making.
That said, I’m actually more concerned that Ben is getting absolved of sexual predation because of his entourage, connections, wealth and whatnot.
Dude is a fucking a-hole no matter how you slice it though.
True, she wasn’t of legal drinking age – but she wasn’t a minor.
I don’t want the guy to get off either – and I AM a Steelers fan.
As for her testimony - - I can’t say I blame her for not wanting to any further. Having heard some of the comments from really hardcore-asshole fans, I don’t think I’d want to have to go through all that either.
Too young to drink = too young to molest in a public bathroom, especially if she’s too drunk to know what’s going on. If they don’t have the goods to charge him criminally, then they don’t have the goods, but I think that the fact that he was having sex in a public place is gross enough, in itself, for the Steelers (who typically do not hold much truck with sleazy behavior) to suspend him. Teams are allowed to do that without a crime having been committed.
He never admitted to molesting her, and specifically denied having sex with her.
“Contact” could mean a huge range of activities, possibly initiated by the woman, and possibly leaving him blameless.
Not that I think that is the case. But there is no proof he did anything wrong, and it seems odd to punish him for things that there is no evidence for and which he denies.
The fact that he denies it isn’t really the issue. (Although what he admitted and what he didn’t should be kept straight.) The fact that she didn’t want to press charges, on the other hand, is relevant. The league and the team can do what it wants, but I’m not sure how much responsibility he has for this mess. He’s been putting himself in stupid positions - pun not intended but not avoided either - but I’m not seeing a predator here.
Ok, then if they were “fooling around,” then he engaged in some grossly inappropriate behavior in a public place with an underaged girl who the police say was too inebriated to comprehend what was happening to her.
It’s not like the Steelers need anybody’s permission to suspend him in any case, but that kind of behavior is grounds for suspension at the very least (especially since he’s got two other accusations besides this one against him). If I was a Rooney, I’d trade his ass for a bag of balls and some kicking tees, but that’s just me.
Police that were very sympathetic to Ben’s cause. This 20 year old woman most certainly did NOT show up at this club already .20 intoxicated. That happened there. Hence the coverup.
In this case she’s “underaged” by something on the order of a few months. But it does sound like he took her to a couple of bars and got her/helped get her very, very drunk. Even if that doesn’t rise to the level of making him a sexual predator it’s an extremely stupid thing for anybody to do, especially a public figure who was already gaining a reputation for doing this kind of thing.
