Just a quick post in response to some of these recent comments suggesting that racism is at the root of Pittsburgh holding on to Ben while trading Holmes away for peanuts. 

To those of you who believe this, I have to disagree.  Ben and Santonio are in different situations.  While I appreciate the hell out of what Santonio's done for the team in recent seasons, he's a player with an actual record (multiple offenses) whose gotten into trouble again under the league substance abuse policy.  Correct me if I'm wrong, but he's headed for a minimum 4-game suspension, right?  It won't matter if its not accompanied by criminal charge, this is a specific policy that lays out a commensurate sanction ahead of time so that the players know what they are risking.  Then there's the issue of resigning him.  Yeah, some might consider this secondary to character issues, but it certainly isn't insignificant.  Pittsburgh management would know better than anyone else what kind of preliminary stance Holmes and his agent may have been taking with respect to a new contract.

To the best of my knowledge, Ben has no criminal history (maybe with the exception of minor traffic offense like speeding).  Yeah, he's dealing with the McNulty civil suit, and this new claimant may go on to file her own lawsuit, but what conclusions are we supposed to draw from that?  Our legal system (almost) allows anyone to sue anyone else for anything; the league knows this and so does not generally punish players based on civil litigation. 

So in the end, how can we claim racism based on Holmes being traded and Ben sticking around?  We can't, at least not yet.  Hey, there really might be something to talk about if it turns out that Ben really did assault/molest these women and the team continues to keep him around, but we're certainly not there yet.

I do, however, throw in with those of you that say we got waaaaay too little for Holmes, hey if there's a petition anywhere that I can sign...