COMMENTARY
By Bob Cook
NBCSports.com contributor
updated 12:56 p.m. ET June 13, 2006
 | Bob Cook |
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If you’re a multimillionaire athlete or want to be one, and you desire a motorcycle, take the advice of Terry Bradshaw: “Ride it when you retire.”
Ben Roethlisberger, the new Super Bowl Steelers quarterback who was the target of the old Super Bowl Steelers quarterback’s advice, didn’t heed it. Nor did he learn from the experiences of Jay Williams, Kellen Winslow Jr. (I hope his dad doesn’t yell at me for saying that), Jerome Mathis, Dario Franchitti, Hermann Maier, Tony Twist, Robertas Javtokas, Ron Gant, Robin Yount or Jeff Kent (under the euphemism “washing my truck”), or other athletes who wiped out or hindered their careers because of motorcycle accidents.
Anybody takes a risk hopping on a motorcycle, just like anybody takes a risk crossing a busy street or getting on a carnival ride. But for athletes, the evidence is clear that motorcycling — especially without a helmet, without experience, or both — is a risk not worth taking. It’s too easy, assuming you don’t lose your life, to lose big money and your career as an accident takes you from physical specimen to physical wreck. Simple physics dictates that for any rider, experienced or not, is that if you do crash, whatever you crashed into wins. Big.
Does that stop these guys from riding? No. Will it stop athletes from riding in the future? Not likely.
Roethlisberger isn’t even the first NFL player this offseason who needed to put his hand on the burner to learn that a lit stove is hot. Mathis, a Pro Bowl kick returner with Houston, suffered arm and hand injuries in a motorcycle crash in March. But he’s fortunate — those injuries are expected to heal by the start of the season. (Alas, for Mathis a lingering foot injury from last season will keep him out until October.)
If Roethlisberger is lucky, all he loses is his paycheck — not that there’s isn’t a sting to be felt with that. Gant, an Atlanta Braves outfielder, in early 1994 signed a one-year deal for $5.5 million, giving him the richest salary in franchise history. A month later, Gant broke his leg in a motorcycle accident. A few weeks later, the Braves cut Gant and voided the deal. Gant came back in 1995 and played about six more years, but he was never the same player, nor did he command the same salary.
Roethlisberger certainly knew about Winslow’s situation with the Cleveland Browns, given the many reporters who asked Roethlisberger about his own helmet-free riding — and coach Bill Cowher's open disdain for it — in the wake of the tight end’s showboating wreck that ripped up his knee ligaments, ending his 2005 season before it began. Winslow’s Hall-of-Fame tight-end father can get mad at the media all he wants for its supposedly overblown coverage, but the Browns are still trying to find a way to void at least some share of bonus money they paid to his son, even as it looks like he might be healthy enough to play in 2006. Yes, Mr. Winslow, 21-year-olds make mistakes. But most don’t cost them millions of dollars.
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| Roethlisberger hurt in motorcycle crashJune 13: Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger is in serious but stable condition after breaking his jaw and nose in a motorcycle crash. NBC's Mike Taibbi reports. Today show |
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Franchitti faces plenty of risk as an Indy-car driver, but if Mr. Ashley Judd was to spend most of the 2003 Indy Racing League season with his back in a brace instead of a racing tub, it was to be for wrecking his race car on the track, not his motorcycle in his native Scotland. Maier, the champion skier from Austria, missed the 2002 Olympics because of a motorcycle accident. Javtokas, a second-round pick of the Spurs in 2001, effectively ended any chance he had of coming to the NBA by crashing his bike in his native Lithuania in 2002, putting him out of basketball action anywhere for three years. Williams, who crashed after his 2002-03 rookie year with the Chicago Bulls, is hoping the Toronto Raptors keep up their reported interest and invite him to training camp to start his comeback, which wouldn’t be bad for someone who nearly lost a leg.
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Depending on the contract, motorcycle riding is a forbidden activity. The NFL, for example, has a clause in its contracts preventing players in participating in any vaguely defined “dangerous activity,” which is how the Browns can go after Winslow. Before his wreck, Roethlisberger told reporters he wasn’t sure he was covered by that, because Pennsylvania law didn’t require him to wear a helmet. Pennsylvania, like other states such as Kentucky, Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas and Michigan, has rescinded mandatory helmet laws, though in most cases riders 21 and younger must still wear them.
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