In an admission that tells us far more about the extent to which NFL players care about the sport they play than we ever wanted to know, Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger believes that 50 percent of his colleagues didn’t know that an NFL game could end in a tie.

The issue came to the forefront in the wake of stunning comments from Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb, after Philly and Cincinnati finished Sunday’s game in a 13-13 deadlock.

“People are making too big of a deal of this,” Roethlisberger said, according to our pal Tim Benz of WXDX in Pittsburgh.   “They’re being too hard on Donovan.  I’d bet you fifty percent of the league didn’t know that at the time.  You’d be surprised.  People seem to think that the quarterback should know it all, and that everyone should know that stuff.  And it’s not necessarily true.  Because who ever thinks of that situation?  How often does it ever come up?  And the rules change so often that you never know what happens.”

Um.  OK.  So, basically, Ben didn’t know it, either.

And receiver Hines Ward apparently didn’t know about sister-kissing until the Steelers and Falcons played to a tie in 2002.

“I thought we just played until we had a winner,” Ward said.  “It’s kind of weird now that you can tie ball games.” 

Yeah, it’s weird.  Tie games have only been part of the NFL since 1920.