HINES WARD AND THE GREAT FACEBOOK APOLOGY

While not on par with some of the most famous athlete interview meltdowns, the usually quiet, always smiling, Hines Ward was able to cause quite a stir when he came down with a short lived case of füt'nmouth disease this weekend.  It all started when Ward commented on Ben Roethlisberger's toughness.  (Rothlisberger did not play — per head coach Mike Tomlin's decision — against the Ravens due to a concussion suffered in the previous game.)

This game is almost like a playoff game. It's almost a must-win. I could see some players or teammates questioning, like, 'It's just a concussion. I've played with a concussion before. I would go out there and play.' So, it's almost like a 50-50 toss-up in the locker room, you know? Should he play? Shouldn't he play? It's really hard to say. I've been out there dinged up. The following week, got right back out there.

In order to clear the air the league's dirtiest player in the NFL — as voted by the players — took to facebook to clear the air.

Apparently technically challenged — or possibly emotionally overwhelmed — Hines didn't use his blog (which has never had an entry, so no need to subscribe to that RSS feed), nor his facebook notes tab, and instead he posted multiple facebook updates within minutes of one another.

To my Steeler nation and my fb and twitter fans; I just finished an extensive conversation with Ben. We spoke about the interview in which I made the #1 mistake in doing a interview, I did it based off of emotions. It's interesting how people interpreted my interview. Some say I threw Ben under the bus, some say I was just making a general statement about about concussions.

I would never question a man's toughness playing in a STEELER unif. I didn't mean to cause such a stir. My frustration was based on the fact that this was a big game for us to stay in the playoff picture and having Ben out there gave us our best opp to win in Balt. I was frustrated because there was no indication of Ben not being able to play because he practiced a normal routine this week (wed, thurs and fri).

Some of the guys didn't find out he wasn't playing until saturday and getting that news on the day before the big game didn't go to well. Now as a veteran guy on the team you can see how upset that made a lot of us considering we were going down into the lions den in Baltimore without our fearless leader.

In the locker room some questions came about playing with a concussion, that is where my 50/50 comment came from based on players opinions. Some say they've played after having a concussion and some say you don't wanna mess with that. half of the guys on the team have had concussions at least once in their careers. ...But in football it's a tough decision on whether one should play or not play.

I know Ben wanted to play this game but the docs told him he's down, and with that we trust our docs with their decisions. We would never jeopardize anyone's health for a game of football. Life is way to precious. One thing about Ben, he is a WINNER. We just wanted this game so badly.

So the moral of this story is not to do an interview based off of emotions and I made that mistake and I have apologized to Ben for that. Ben and I are cool and always will be. We will not let this come between us, our talk was very productive.

I wanted to set the record straight with my fans first because the media will not get comments about this situation from me, it's resolved and we are focusing on Oakland and getting back on the right track. Hats off to Dennis! He played his heart out. He won over a lot of guys on our team. He is gonna be a star! 86

Thanks to all of those book reports I had to do back in high school I think I can summarize this in my own words:

Yo.  I screwed up.

I talked without thinking how the media can take a vague statement out of context.  I've spoken with Ben and explained that, while I was frustrated, it was with the situation not directly with him.  I've learned from this.  Ben and I are good.  We hugged.

We now have faith in Dennis Dixon, who no one liked before.

Oh, and Bob Costas' job just got even more difficult — as more and more players are going to "Jay Cutler" him the rest of the season and beyond.  (Sorry, Bob.)

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