The Pittsburgh Steelers said goodbye to Ben Roethlisberger after the 2021 season but he is still very much a part of Steeler Nation. The future Hall of Famer retired with virtually every Steelers passing record and was firmly in the top ten NFL passers of all time. Roethlisberger has started a popular podcast Footbahlin With Ben Roethlisberger with co-host Spencer T’eo and it has been a treasure trove of content for Pittsburgh talk radio, Twitter and Steeler Nation.
Episode 17 featured Roethlisberger’s first athlete who did not play professional football. Neil Walker, who coincidentally was drafted by the Pittsburgh Pirates the same year as the former signal caller, joined the podcast this week. Walker played seven years in Pittsburgh and was a popular Pirate player. T’eo asked the pair of former athletes if they thought they could have played another sport professionally.
“I could have played in the Majors, easily” Roethlisberger said with his tongue firmly in cheek. “I could have gone right to the top. Listen, people can say what they want but I was a good athlete. I was this, I was that. No, you couldn’t have done it.”
Roethlisberger is a big man and freely admitted his second sport was basketball, not baseball. Both he and Walker agreed that it is very hard to be a good enough player in two sports and play professionally but those that could do it are exceedingly rare talents. The pair settled on one name when asked who the best two-sport athlete was in their opinion.
“I think to me the best I saw was Bo Jackson,” Roethlisberger said in response to two sport athletes. “And it’s hard, you could go way back to like Jim Thorpe and pick some people. I think Bo was just a freak. Deion (Sanders) was good, but was he considered great?”
“I don’t think he was considered great,” Walker chimed in. “He was good.”
“Bo Jackson was like stupid great at both,” Roethlisberger retorted. “I would go Bo but that is just my opinion of the people I saw.”
Deion Sanders is making waves with a highly successful coaching career at the college level. It is not farfetched to think that if he continues on his current career path, he could end up on an NFL sideline, someday soon. Sanders is a top three corner in the history of the NFL depending on your taste, but he was also a major league level player, but not an All-Star level talent in MLB. A hip injury derailed a potential Hall of Fame career in both sports for Bo Jackson who was a Pro Bowler and MLB All-Star.
“There was this debate for a long time about LeBron James playing football,” Roethlisberger continued. Listen, freak athlete, huge guy, I always said put him down there for a jump ball on the two-yard line. He is probably going to catch it every time. But I bet you he doesn’t want to go across the middle with Ed Reed and Troy Polamalu. He’s a lot bigger, but those guys are moving so hard it is not going to be fun. He’s one of the greatest basketball players of all time but it doesn’t mean it’s going to translate to another sport.”
Pundits and the Twitterverse have explored the idea for years that LeBron James would be an unstoppable force as a football player. James is an impressive physical specimen but unlike basketball, football is a contact sport. When the hype was at its highest a decade ago, the NFL was a different place, and going across the middle as a tight end might have drawn a hard-hitting safety. It definitely would have drawn confrontations with linebackers like James Harrison, and it is terrifying to think of what would have happened in that collision.
Roethlisberger wanted to make it clear he was talking across the board and not just picking on the enigmatic basketball icon. The former Pro Bowler is considered to be an above-average golfer for a football player, and he turned his attention to the man who is considered by many as the best amateur golfer among ex-football players.
“Tony Romo wanted to go play golf,” Roethlisberger concluded his thought. “Tony Romo is an extremely good golfer. I’ve talked to people that I know in the same tournaments, professional golfers that are like 100 to 150 in the world. We are not talking top 50, they say dude I’d beat the brakes off him, he can’t make a cut. But he can beat 99 percent of the population that is not a professional golfer. It just doesn’t translate.”
Roethlisberger has made headlines several times in Pittsburgh with his comments about Kenny Pickett, Matt Canada and Mike Tomlin. Branching out with Walker and commenting on LeBron James and Tony Romo is a departure from his usual subject matter, but it is sure to raise a few eyebrows that don’t belong to Pittsburgh Steelers fans.
More must-reads: