Weekly Sports Fun

Its time to play everyone’s favorite game: Sports Idiot of the Week. This week’s contestants are Ben Roethlisberger of the Pittsburgh Steelers and JJ Redick, NBA hopeful and former guard for the Duke Blue Devils. It looked like Roethlisberger was a shoe-in for the award on Monday morning, but Redick made a valiant effort to trump him late Monday night. Let’s take a look at each case.

Monday morning Roethlisberger was hit by an oncoming car while riding his motorcycle. This is not what puts him in contention for the award. What made him look like the sure winner was the fact that last summer he went on record to say he would not wear a motorcycle helmet unless the state of Pennsylvania made him do so. Today he sits in the hospital with a fractured jaw, broken nose, a cut on the back of his head and several missing teeth. Ironically he only hurt the parts of his body which would have been covered by a helmet. (For the record, season-ending injuries from a motorcycle accident only happen if you play for a Cleveland football team. See: Kellen Winslow)

While it looked like Big Ben would have walked away with the award after having his remarks come back to haunt him, JJ Redick took it from his grasp. Redick, everyone’s All-American, found a way to out-do him. On Monday night he was charged with a DWI. This does not make him an idiot. What makes him an idiot is how he got caught (and if you know me at all, you know I have very little room to judge as far as stupid arrests go). Redick saw a police sobriety check-point and decided to do an illegal u-turn to avoid going through it. I have to wonder if the illegal u-turn to avoid a sobriety check-point has actually ever worked for anyone. He deserves credit for giving it the old college try by doing something else illegal to avoid the checkpoint. Surely this wouldn’t draw any more attention on him, would it? For this reason and for the simple fact he has taken publicity from the Duke lacrosse scandal, he takes home the award this week.

Tune in next week as we prepare for the NBA draft by chronicling all the failed drafts of your favorite Cleveland teams. Your hosts for the program will be Tim Couch and Trajon Langdon.