The weekly assemble of who is hot, mad and just down on their luck in the sporting world
Lyle Morissette
Sports Editor
The Good
Chad Ochocinco: The rambunctious Bengals wide receiver just loves the spotlight, and it loves him back. Not content with just being a multi-millionaire playboy football star, Chad has taken his sideshow to network television. You can find him bustin’-a-move on the current season of Dancing With the Stars—with whom he is competing against a wide array of stars, including Buzz Aldrin—or you can catch him later this summer when he launches his own Bachelor-esque dating show called “The Tournament”. The premise: Chad will go through 85 (his number and roughly translated last name Ochocino) women vying for his love and affection in hopes of finding the “one”. While those shows are often contrived hoaxes, it’s hard to argue with his objects of choice: women, women, and more women. He really is damn entertaining.
The Mad
Robert Whaley: The ex-NBA player was recently busted with weed between his buttocks…weed between his buttocks; that is not a typo. The funniest (stupidest) thing is that it was discovered after he was pulled over for not wearing a seatbelt. Seriously, you’d think if someone was “transporting” contraband that they would be smart enough to at least buckle up. Apparently not! Oh, Whaley also had an outstanding arrest warrant out on him as well. Congrats on the trifecta Robert: ticket for not wearing a seat belt, busted for “crack” smuggling, and arrested for fleeing from a previous charge.
The Downtrodden
Ben Roethlisberger: “Big Ben” once again finds himself between a rock-and-a-hard-place as he was recently accused of sexually assaulting yet another young female. This time it is a 20-year old college student in Georgia, where the Steeler’s QB resides during the off-season. To add to his quickly diminishing public profile, and possibly his career, is the fact that his own coach, Mike Tomlin, is now stricken with anxiety over the situation, which is never a good harbinger of events to come. “My concerns are many,” Tomlin said, “but I think at this time it’s kind of appropriate to watch these things and let these things run their course. I think it would be inappropriate for me to have strong feelings one way or another with the investigation being ongoing and so forth. Like everyone else, you watch these things unfold.” The 20-year old woman accused Roethlisberger of sexually assaulting her in a Georgia nightclub earlier this month. Not surprisingly, Ben already faces a lawsuit filed last July by a woman who says he raped her in 2008 at a Lake Tahoe hotel and casino, an allegation he strongly denies, along with the most recent one. Lightning often strikes the same area twice for a reason Ben. Playing along with the “innocent until proven guilty” assumption, he has not been taken into custody, nor has he been criminally charged in either case. For a hilarious take—or not—of the situation take a gander at the South Park season 14 premiere, which takes a shot at athlete infidelity with reference to Roethlisberger—and Tiger Woods, naturally.