It's Oh So Quiet

Or it was, this offseason, until late yesterday, when it was revealed Ben Roethlisberger is the subject (or one of them) in a civil case filed last week by a Harrah's employee in Nevada alleging sexual assault in an incident that supposedly happened a year ago.

If Ben is guilty, it's a horrible thing, he's a horrible person and we have to immediately reassess our perception of him, whether you already think him to be a stoic hero, an attention whore or kind of a dick. Even if it's bad, it'll be worse.

At this point, the case looks highly suspect. People are cursorily screaming that she wants money, a coworker has said the woman was seeing a psychiatrist and sleeping with another married man. Now, even if both of those claims are true, it doesn't mean she couldn't have been assaulted, however still it lends a further shitshow factor to a case that just broke yesterday. Solid information is scant and very well may be for a little while. In the meantime, rampant idiotic speculation will rush to fill the void. Make a beeline for The Big Lead or ProFootballTalk if you're in need of that.

Naturally, Ravens and Patriots fans are having a field day with this. Ravens fans are already tossing out the "you mock us for Ray Lewis being a murderer when he wasn't found to be a murderer! Karma karma karma!" stuff. True enough, Lewis didn't have a murder charge stick, but Ray-Ray was actually convicted of something (obstruction of justice), which was a lesser charge he plea bargained for in exchange for cooperation with authorities during his case, so we can assume he was guilty of more than that. So far, Roethlisberger is the defendant in a civil case with no criminal charges. And Patriots fans are always desperate to tarnish other teams because they have to live with the fact that the three championships that caused them to start rooting for their team are sullied by cheating. In the end, even if Roethlisberger is cleared of this entirely, even if he doesn't pay a dime in a settlement to end this civil case, dumb haters (those who find wordplay like "Worthlessberger" to be witty rejoinder at its most corruscating) will harp on this and add to their extensive repotoire of mindless detraction.