Are you ready for some football?

Are you ready for a screwjob of epic proportions?

A running joke this season has been the Pittsburgh Steelers having to battle two separate foes each and every Sunday.  Most obviously, they had to defeat the team lined up across from them.  Then they had to contend with their hidden opponents; the officials.  I’ve tried to not subscribe to Pittsburgh Paranoia or whine like a Ratbird fan but it’s nigh impossible to ignore the anti-Steelers bias coming from the NFL this season.

Who can forget the debacle against Oakland where the Black and Gold racked up the most penalty yardage in their eighty year history?  Or the Ravens game where Heath Miller was knocked out by an obvious cheapshot shortly after Ben Roethlisberger had his snoot crushed by Haloti Ngata and no flags were thrown on either play?   I’m sure Steeler Nation expected the officiating to improve in the playoffs only to see our team penalized nine times for 93 yards last Saturday.  Yeah, the zebras missed a couple personal fouls on Ike Taylor and Kemo but they also missed Ed Reed attempting to corkscrew Hines’ head off by the facemask.

Worse, the referees continued their habit of providing no protection to Big Ben.  If you watch the Suggs fumble in slo-mo, you’ll notice Ben was hit well above the shoulder pads.  As die hard fans will recall,  LaMarr Woodley was flagged for a PF when he hit Drew Brees in exactly the same manner.  I also counted at least three occasions when dirty Ravens thugs dove in at Ben’s knees, a clear violation of the Brady Rule which prohibits going low on a QB.

Prepare for more of the same on Sunday.  If you thought the Ginger Dictator and his striped monkeys were out to get the Steelers before, they’ll kick it up a notch this weekend.  Make no mistake, the NFL does not want Pittsburgh in the Super Bowl.  It would be their worst nightmare.

Starting with Big Ben’s totally unwarranted and unfair suspension, everything the league has done this season has been designed to keep the Black and Gold from reaching the big game.  We all know Ginger is a public relations whore who goes to sleep at night thinking of new ways to protect the shield.  If you thought the five ninja virgins who picketed Heinz Field when Ben returned was bad, imagine the picketing when he reaches the Super Bowl.  Every hairy-armpitted Womyn’s Libber within a hundred miles will be taking time off from watching Oprah and snuggling with their cats to protest.

I fully expect the yellow flags to fly early and often on Sunday.  Don’t expect any borderline calls to go our way.  And before you say, “Well, we’ve overcome the biased officiating all year.  What’s one more game?” allow me to remind you of our first meeting with the New York Jets.  Down five with a little less than two minutes left, Emmanuel Sanders blew past the Jets secondary then had his jersey practically torn off his back by the toast corner.  No flag.

Let’s hope it doesn’t come down to that this time.

If you listen closely, you can hear the hearts of millions of women breaking.

Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback and uber-bachelor Ben Roethlisberger is reportedly engaged to Ashley Harlan (pictured above).  The news began circulating online yesterday but I dismissed it as local gossip in the same vein of Bill Cowher having an affair with Kordell Stewart’s sister.  He doesn’t have a sister, people.  However, the story picked up steam when KDKA’s John Shumway questioned Ben and the Post-Gazette added more credence when they did what any respectable newspaper would do; send a reporter out to ambush the alleged fiancee’s family.

My natural reaction to this story was, “That’s the best he could do?”  Then I remembered he’s a goofy looking lug.  My next thought was, “How gullible do they think we are?”  According to the PG article, Harlan’s mother was introducing Ben as her daughter’s boyfriend last summer.  We are to believe they began dating four months after he got in trouble for banging a drunk skank in a bathroom stall and now they’re engaged less than six months after that?  Maybe if they met on the super-secret website used by Charlie Sheen, Michael Jackson, and Tom Cruise specializing in conveniently timed sham marriages.

In hindsight, I guess the shenanigans in Milledgeville could be viewed a bachelor party.  Sure would have been a whole lot safer (and smarter) to just hire a stripper instead of seeking free entertainment from loose sorority girls.

Whatever the case, Ms. Harlan is certainly a PR person’s dream.  She’s a local, having graduated from Laurel High School in New Castle and went to college at St. Francis.  She currently works as a Physician’s Assistant, which puts her somewhere between highly educated nurse and undereducated doctor.   So despite her plain-jane appearance, you can certainly sell her to the gullible media as a bright young woman not at all interested in Big Ben’s monopoly money.

While I certainly applaud Ben’s efforts to become a better man after the debacle last March, part of me hopes this news is not true.  Despite his dickish behavior, I always appreciated the fact Ben was true to himself.  Tom Brady is a deadbeat dad who pretends to be everybody’s dreamy All-American.  Bret Favre is an unfaithful pervert who texts his junk to random women while pretending to be a loyal husband to his unbearable shrew of a wife.

Ben never pretended to be anything but a big goof who loves getting hammered, banging sluts, and playing football.  He wasn’t a Christian gentleman like Tim Tebow or an overrated famewhore like Tony Romo.  For better or worse, Ben was Ben.   And far be it for me to question the power of true love (which no doubt blossomed over a beer bong) but I guess I’m a little sad he decided to sell out like so many others before him.