If quarterback Ben Roethlisberger can lead his Pittsburgh Steelers to victory in Sunday’s Super Bowl, it’s a good bet he’ll look into the television cameras right after the game and thank God for his remarkable pilgrimage from pariah to hero — a player who started the season with a four-game suspension after his second sexual-assault accusation in a year, but ended it with a championship ring.
It’s also likely that more than a few of the 100 million viewers will roll their eyes (or worse) at Roethlisberger’s piety, figuring him to be just another scandal-tarred bad boy using Jesus to protect his lucrative career and maybe position himself for some sponsorship deals.
Yet new research on religion and National Football League players suggests that if Roethlisberger isn’t being cynical about the role of faith in his life, then we shouldn’t be either.
Indeed, sociologist Eric M. Carter found that while pro football players are much more likely than most Americans to engage in “deviant” behaviors — no surprise to anyone who recognizes the names Brett Favre and Michael Vick — the athletes who embrace religion and practice what they preach are much better citizens than their peers.
“I was really surprised to see the impact it [religion] had on this group of players,” said Carter, a professor of sociology at Georgetown College in Kentucky and author of “Boys Gone Wild: Fame, Fortune and Deviance Among Professional Football Players.”
“Those players who believed in God and actually practiced their religion in terms of service in their community were far less likely to be engaged in law-breaking behaviors or other forms of deviant behavior like attempted suicide or especially drug or alcohol abuse,” he said.
That’s the good news. The bad news is that NFL players apparently need saving more than everyone else.
In fact, Carter was prompted to launch his study when he reconnected with a couple of friends who had played in the NFL and recounted hair-raising stories of rampant domestic violence, drug and alcohol abuse and sexual deviance. “I don’t know how many guys I know that beat women, their wives or their girlfriends, or, for that matter, both,” one player told Carter during the course of his research. “It seems to be a common thing.”
Between 2001 and 2006, Carter interviewed 104 pro football players, with a mean age of 30. That is just a slice of the total NFL roster of some 1,700 players, but it provided Carter an insight into the scope of the problems that players face, and the misconduct they get away with.
“We see a lot of what goes on, because of the media,“ Carter said. “But I was amazed at how much goes on that isn’t picked up — how powerful the NFL is in combating some of the potential bad media. I couldn’t believe how many guys contemplated suicide or attempted it, or were that unhappy with their lives that they engaged in these self-destructive behaviors.”
Carter found that 32 percent of the players he interviewed had been arrested after they entered the league — and others said they often evaded arrest by dispensing autographs to star-struck police officers — and nearly half described themselves as unhappy people.
“Fifty percent? That’s a big number,” he said, especially when you consider that these are young men who make on average more than $1 million a year to play football, and many of them much more than that.
“It just goes against our contemporary American conceptions of what happiness is. They have it all. They have the wealth, the fame, the power, the status — all of those things that many people equate with a happy life.”
Yet evidence of the dysfunction just beneath the surface abounds.
Ben Roethlisberger made headlines when a 20-year-old college student accused him of sexually assaulting her in a bathroom in a Georgia bar where he was celebrating his birthday last March, the second such incident for the quarterback in the space of a year. (In 2006 Roethlisberger also made headlines when he got into an accident while riding his motorcycle; he was not wearing a helmet and did not have a valid license.) Georgia investigators said they did not have enough evidence to press charges in the sex assault case, but the NFL suspended Roethlisberger for the first six games of the season, eventually reducing it to four games.
Then there was the pathetic melodrama of aging superstar Brett Favre and allegations of immoral conduct. Michael Vick had a sparkling season this year with the Philadelphia Eagles, which is what he needed to complete his rehabilitation from the notorious dog-fighting convictions that led to a two-year jail term and suspension from the league. Former Giants star wide receiver Plaxico Burress is still in jail on a weapons conviction — he accidentally shot himself in the thigh in 2008.
But there are far more tragic episodes, too. Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver Chris Henry was killed in 2009 when he fell off a pickup truck driven by his fiancée during a domestic fight. Earlier that year, Cleveland Browns wide receiver Donte’ Stallworth struck and killed a pedestrian with his Bentley after a night of partying at a swanky Miami hotel.
A Denver Broncos cornerback, Darrent Williams, was killed in a drive-by shooting in 2007, and just last September another Broncos player, 23-year-old Kenny McKinley, committed suicide, apparently distraught over knee surgery that had sidelined him. Team officials said they had no clue McKinley was depressed.
Players say “NFL” really stands for “Not For Long.” When they get out of the sport, things aren’t much better. Two years after leaving football, an astounding 78 percent were bankrupt or suffering “severe financial distress.”
As one player told Carter: “If you ain’t got no family, no loving wife, or other things like that, it’s God … He’s the only thing that’s gonna save you.”
As to whether all the public expressions of godliness are authentic — especially when they come from players seeking to polish a tarnished image — Carter said it’s hard to tell. Anyone who has watched an NFL game knows that Christian piety in particular seems integral to the game, as players routinely make the sign of the cross or point skyward after a big play, or gather with opponents in a midfield prayer circle at the final whistle. And players like Michael Vick have said faith has been part of their comeback.
Yet for every professing Christian like New Orleans Saints QB Drew Brees or Matt Hasselbeck of the Seattle Seahawks, there are other players who reflexively say they believe in God but don’t really engage their faith.
In September 2010, Roethlisberger was telling interviewers that he had rediscovered the Christian faith of his childhood and it had changed him for good. Friends and teammates have said they noticed the change, too.
“It’s a calming feeling when the Lord runs your life,” Roethlisberger told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. “And it’s something I’ve always known as a church person, but I’ve never really believed it. I think I’ve known it but never believed it. And now I know it, and it’s a great thing.”
But Roethlisberger conceded that skeptics would likely roll their eyes at any pious pronouncements, so he’s just going to let his actions speak for him. “You’re not going to win people back overnight. You’re not going to win all of them back, period. But, like I said, my actions will speak volumes over the next days, weeks, months and years…”
“I’m not going to be going out there and trying to push it on people and make it seem like all of a sudden I am this great person. That’s not who I am. That’s not what religion and faith is all about. You’re not going to see me getting cross tattoos and wearing cross necklaces. That’s not what it’s about. So if they want to roll their eyes, that’s fine. Because I know where I am at and God knows where I’m at, and that’s all that really matters.”