A Modern-Day Fable

Picture yourself in a boat, on a river. Possibly the Allegheny. Actually, no, this metaphor works better in the ocean, so picture yourself on a steel boat in the middle of the ocean, sailing to Heinz Field in Pittsburgh. You're about halfway through your voyage and there is no land in sight, when all of a sudden your navigator develops a pathological urge to punch holes in your boat all the time.

This is a problem, obviously, but you can't just throw the guy overboard for punching holes in the boat because he's the only one who knows how to figure out where you are without any landmarks and you'll all die without him. So you do your best to restrain him, patch up the holes, and look for any extra weight to jettison in the meantime. In your search for unnecessary cargo, you discover that one of your crew members has handcuffed himself to a big old steamer trunk full of hash. What is the most correct action to make at this juncture? YOU MAKE THE CALL!!

Now, if you're a member of the Rooney family, who owns the Pittsburgh Steelers, the first thing you do is trade Santonio Holmes to the Jets. Holmes (full name: Santonio Negron Holmes) has been suspended by the league for the first four games of the season due to violation of the NFL's drug-abuse policy, a fact the Jets may or may not have known when they agreed to take him off of Art Rooney's hands. It's not like they lost a whole lot, though. In return for Santonio (a name proclaiming a deep love of the state of Texas (Holmes has never lived in Texas)), the Steelers received a fifth-round draft pick.

For those of you who do not follow football, this means that the Steelers did not get anyone in return for Santonio Holmes. They got an extra chance to pick a new NFL player who probably won't be as good as Santonio Holmes, because whoever he is, he won't get chosen until the fifth round of the draft. Holmes, by the by, was voted Most Valuable Player of the 2008 Super Bowl. He's also been suspended twice now for drug use/possession, tweeted to one of his fans to “kill urself,” and was arrested for throwing a glass (not the drink, the glass) at a woman in Miami Beach. So, you know. It's a wash.

As for our boat-sabotaging quarterback, Ben Roethlisberger, things are not looking good. On the up side, the unnamed woman he had sex with in Milledgeville has decided not to press charges. Unfortunately, that means that the investigation records of the case (minus the name of the Mysterious Milledgeville Miss) have been made public—and there are over 572 pages of them. As of right now, none of the Rooneys have opened discussions with other teams about trading Roethlisberger, but they're making it pretty clear to him that it's on their minds.

And the moral of this story is, if you punch holes in the boat with your penis, the other sailors might just decide to take their chances without you after all.