DETROIT – It has happened quicker for Ben Roethlisberger than Eli Manning and Philip Rivers, because it has happened quicker for him than anyone who has ever played quarterback except Dan Marino, who was 23 years and four months old when he lost to Joe Montana on the last Sunday of his second season with the Dolphins. Roethlisberger didn’t have Montana standing between him and the Lombardi trophy last night. It was Matt Hasselbeck who was trying to stop him from becoming the youngest quarterback to win a Super Bowl. Younger than Tom Brady. Younger than Joe Namath.
And yet no one knows him as Young Ben, even though he was 23 years and 340 days old when he tried to win one for the thumb for his black-and-gold franchise and one for Jerome Bettis in his own backyard. He is Big Ben, because he is 6-5, 241 pounds, with a chance to stand even taller on the kind of stage that can forever make him Giant Ben in American sporting lore if he continues this magical playoff roll (7 TDs, 1 INT) and shows up Steel Certain one more time.
No one, not even Bill Cowher, certainly not Ernie Accorsi and Tom Coughlin, saw this coming. Only in Hollywood do you come out of a place like Miami (Ohio) and in two short years take your team to the Super Bowl. Or so we thought. Sometimes you can get lucky with a Tom Brady, a sixth-round afterthought out of Michigan. Big Ben provides a compelling argument that if you want to be a Super Bowl threat one day, you might want to think about getting yourself a franchise quarterback.
The last one the Steelers had, Terry Bradshaw, won four Super Bowls, getting the ball back from Mean Joe Greene, Jack Lambert and Mel Blount, then throwing downfield to Lynn Swann and John Stallworth when he wasn’t handing off to Franco Harris. Big Ben doesn’t have that kind of supporting cast. He doesn’t have a Shaun Alexander behind him like Hasselbeck does. He doesn’t have any Hall of Fame receivers. His team isn’t here without him getting hot at the right time, overcoming his playoff jitters of a year ago and performing in the month of January as if he were Derek Jeter in the months of October or November.
All eyes were on Big Ben because these unexpected romance stories of wondrous youth captivate us, and they have been much too infrequent in our neck of the woods. Too few Boys of Summer, or Winter, Spring and Fall for that matter. Jackie Robinson defied injustice with his iron will and his restraint and his legs. Namath was our brash young rebel, the anti-establishment playboy who made love on Broadway, not war in Vietnam. Clyde was cool, Willis The Captain. The Mick awed us. Willie caught our hearts in a basket. Tom Terrific was The Franchise. Dr. J. defied gravity and left us breathless. LT, our Superman, sacked us. Doc Gooden and Darryl Strawberry were our phenoms who were locks for the Hall of Fame until they slammed into the Wall of Shame. Jeter, such a precocious champion, is our modern-day DiMaggio. Patrick Ewing never chose to make himself The People’s Choice. Chad Pennington titillated us, until his rotator cuffed him.
The event – the relentless hype overkill, the corporate lemmings, the backslapping leeches, the families and friends – didn’t seem too big for Big Ben. No one expected the game to be too big for him either. No one expected it to be too big for Hasselbeck either. No one has run on the Seahawks. Joey Porter was going to try to tap out Alexander, and is foil, Jerramy Stevens.
It was put up or shut up for Porter. Troy Polamalu was going to try to be everywhere as long as his ankle let him.
So the odds were the Super Bowl would go to the quarterback who played bigger. The quarterback they call Big Ben looked big enough to reach up and touch history.
Xxtra Large Ben in Super Bowl XL.