ROETHLISBERGER PLAYED WITH BROKEN RIBS

Some in the media (including John Clayton of ESPN) openly scoffed at our Super Bowl-week report that Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger secretly underwent an X-ray on his ribs/back. The X-ray was related to an injury that Roethlisberger sustained during the AFC title game. Roethlisberger initially wouldn’t comment on the situation, and coach Mike Tomlin responded to questions from AFC pool reporter Peter King about the matter with a vague “not that I heard.” Apparently, Tomlin needs to get better sources within his team. Because, according to King’s latest MMQB column, Roethlisberger indeed had an X-ray on his ribs. (Big Ben admitted to NBC’s Andrea Kremer that he’d had an X-ray “somewhere.”) King also reports that, as it turns out, two of the ribs were broken, as revealed not by the X-ray but by an MRI performed after the Super Bowl. “Fractured ribs,’' Roethlisberger told King. “Luckily, in the game, I didn’t take any big hits to make ‘em hurt. But I knew all along there was something wrong. There wouldn’t have been anything they could have done about fractured ribs anyway. It was just suck it up and play.’' So what, if anything, will the league do about the fact that the Steelers lied about Roethlisberger’s injury status? Most likely, the league will do nothing; because Roethlisberger practiced the entire week before the game and played throughout it, the Steelers didn’t misrepresent his ultimate availability. The deeper question, however, is whether the purpose of the injury-reporting rules is to disclose information affecting only potential availability to play, or also potential effectiveness while doing so. With Roethlisberger (as King reported during Super Bowl week) stretching his midsection at practice sessions, something wasn’t right. And, as Roethlisberger pointed out, a “big hit” during the game could have caused a problem. So why wasn’t Roethlisberger ever disclosed as a full participant in practice, with the word “ribs” thereafter in parentheses? That information, if it was possessed by folks who are inclined to wager money on the game, might have prompted them to take the Cardinals and the points. And that’s why the league needs to take this issue more seriously. In our view, there’s a potential Tim Donaghy scandal lurking in the league’s 32 locker rooms. And we fear it’s only a matter of time before we learn that a team has been infiltrated by the mob, and that the thing got started because the mob knew that there was so much more information about player health to be had than what was making its way onto the official injury reports.