Posted: Wednesday, January 16, 2013 12:02 am
By Chris Mueller Special to The Times | 2 comments
The Steeler Way is winning. Plain and simple. This was displayed in stark relief after Chris Rainey was embroiled in a domestic incident in Florida. Within hours, the Steelers had released the first-year running back, and the move was lauded by many in the media and public at large.
The thing is, while it could have been interpreted as a move rooted in morals and a zero-tolerance approach to any negative situation involving even the implication of violence against a woman, it wasn’t. The release of Rainey was a referendum on one thing—how expendable he was to the team.
Sure, the age of social media and the Internet has reduced exponentially the number of “true believers,” fans that feel the Steelers really are morally superior to all other franchises in the NFL, but there are still holdouts. Let me state this for the record, definitively: the Steelers, like every other team in professional sports, will put up with a player’s legal issues if keeping said player will help with winning, and in turn, the bottom line. It is not rocket science. It is also not palatable to many.
There will always be members of the peanut gallery that want “bad guys” and players with the nebulous, delightful tag of “might have character issues” to be kept as far away from the black and gold as possible. That is laughably naïve. The Steelers are a corporate entity, and nothing helps fatten the bottom line and render complaints about bad-boy behavior moot like winning.
Want to know why Alameda Ta’amu is still on the team after playing drunken SUV pinball in the South Side? The Steelers think he can help them win in the future, and think it will be difficult enough to replace him that they are willing to deal with the slings and arrows of a community that cannot imagine why he still resides on the roster. That is all it is. It is not some desire to help a guy with a drinking problem. It is not anything related to off the field matters.
Ta’amu was contrite, both by his own admission and that of his teammates. Irrelevant. He was seen as tougher to replace than a shifty, change-of-pace running back — one whose guilt is in question, in light of recent eyewitness statements.
The double standards are not hard to find if you look. The Steelers kept James Harrison after his domestic incident, with Dan Rooney stopping just short of condoning Harrison’s physical abuse because it centered around his desire to baptize his child. They dropped Cedrick Wilson for a domestic incident shortly after. Why? Harrison was very good at football, and very difficult to replace. Wilson was neither.
Ta’amu is no Harrison -- not yet -- but he’s seen as much more valuable than Rainey. That’s why Ta’amu is still a member of the team today, and Rainey won’t be the second the team can release him.
The Steeler Way had nothing to do with it. The Steeler Way, at least as it prevails in the mind of true believers, doesn’t exist. Not now, not in the past, not ever.
http://www.timesonline.com/sports/steelers/mueller-meltdown-rainey-wasn-t-good-enough-to-be-bad/article_ef3ee0be-d27d-5926-b354-29c39730ebe5.html
don't know about your fantasy about the Steelers but in my mind this pretty much buts the hammer on the nail head. but i do think the Steelers try to get the best conduct/athletic type of player. but in life as with the Steelers justice isn't always fair.
