For Aaron Rodgers, a win in Dallas Sunday would have removed him from the shadow of Brett Favre and moved him into the place where he rightfully belongs: Among the short list of the NFL's great QBs.
For Ben Roethlisberger, a win in Dallas would have put him in elite company as one of only five QBs to win three Super Bowls(Joe Montana, Terry Bradshaw, Troy Aikman, Tom Brady being the others). Most importantly, it would have momentarily made people forget all about Roethlisberger's sexual assault-ridden offseason.
Unfortunately, only one man could have gotten what he wanted, and that man was Aaron Rodgers. Rodgers became the first Packers quarterback to win a Super Bowl MVP since Bart Starr in the Super Bowl II. By winning the MVP, he managed to achieve something his legendary predecessor couldn't and punctuated the epitome of an "Eff You" season from Green Bay to Brett Favre. That being said, and this is not to take anything away from the greatest sporting moment in the Leonardis house in 12 years, the position that Rodgers is in right now, oddly enough, is the same one Roethlisberger was in after his first Super Bowl.
Back in 2005, it was Big Ben who took a scrappy 6-seed Steelers team, conquered three giants on the road and marched into Super Sunday and walked away with a victory. Rodgers' night was spectacular, but it had been done before. Sunday night, however, the tables had turned on Big Ben. Rather than be celebrated(even in a loss) as someone who persevered through a PR nightmare to lead a team with the worst offensive line in Super Bowl history to within a final drive of winning his third ring, Roethlisberger found himself still the comic foil for transgressions that may or may not have occurred in Georgia bathroom stall.
Instead of a great game between two outstanding young QBs, many on the various social media platforms(including myself, who never passes up a chance to take a few shots at...well, anyone) made Rodgers and company's Super Bowl win into a triumph of good over evil. Don't believe me? Here's a sample of some tweets from people with a bit more money and fame than yours truly:
@rosemcgowan: Yes!!! Hooray for the non-raping quarterback!
@thefredsavage: My congratulations to the Packers for showing that Roethlisberger can only score when 3 of his bodyguards block the exit to the men's room.
I'm not saying we should be ashamed for taking shots at Roethlisberger or even saying Savage and McGowan were out of line for saying what they said. However, let the record show that Big Ben was never actually CONVICTED of rape. That's not to say that it didn't actually happen because, Lord knows, that Georgia assault case was handled with the clumsiness of the Keystone cops, but at what point do we let Big Ben off the hook for crimes he was only accused of? Next week? Next year? Next Super Bowl? Never?
Plaxico Burress shot himself in the leg and is doing time for his stupidity. He deserves our ridicule. Donte Stallworth actually killed a man with his car and got slapped on the wrist with a 30-day sentence. He deserves our outrage. If Michael Vick can win Comeback Player of the Year without the overwhelming cacophony of dog-fighting jokes and PETA picketing outside the league office, isn't it time to move on from Roethlisberger's trysts?
Maybe it's not, but it makes you wonder what the world would be saying about Ben had he did to the Packers Sunday night what he did to the Cardinals in 2008 in orchestrating a masterful 4th quarter comeback with less than two minutes to go to win the Super Bowl. You wonder if the storybook ending written for Ben would be different had he emerged from Dallas victorious instead of a couple incompletions short of a comeback. Kobe Bryant's rape allegations seem like a distant memory because, in the time that has elapsed since then and now, he won a few championships and is now billed more as a better "teammate"(even after he threw Andrew Bynum under the bus during a YouTube video taken at the mall and spent weeks demanding to get the hell out of L.A.). Winning seems to always change everything. As the cliche goes, "to the victor, belongs the spoils". Rodgers brought the Lombardi Trophy back to Titletown and he'll spend the next few months of his life riding high. In the meantime, short of Christina Aguilera's O.J.-style butchering of the National Anthem and Fergie's atrocious singing during an equally-horrid Black Eyed Peas halftime show, the biggest tragedy Sunday night was the fact that this mess still found its way into the postgame conversations of a phenomenal football game and that a guy who has done everything he can to turn things around still finds his face on the dart boards of so many.
Look, I'm not telling you how to perceive Ben Roethlisberger, but the fact of the matter is, only two people know what really happened on that fateful night in Milledgeville and, whether you agree with the end result or not, the accused never spent a day in jail for what was believed to have happened. Ben Roethlisberger took the field Sunday with the chance to rewrite his story and he failed.
That makes him the defeated. It doesn't make him guilty.
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