Concussion Means It's Time to Retire, Moron

Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger plans to start Sunday’s playoff game despite having sustained a concussion on the final day of the regular season, and he and the people aiding and abetting that foolhardy decision need a wake-up call. “Ben Roethlisberger is not brave,” Charles P. Pierce writes for OT, the Boston Globe’s weekly sports magazine. “Ben Roethlisberger is a moron.”

The unseen danger of head injuries is terrifyingly real: Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia. “This is not blowing out a knee, or pitching through a fraying rotator cuff, or running with a balky hamstring,” writes Pierce, who would like to see Roethlisberger retire immediately. “This is messing with the fundamentals of what makes you an individual human being.” (More Ben Roethlisberger stories.)