Right about now, every football fan in America is asking him- or herself the same question: if Shaun Rogers is dumb enough to bring a gun to an airport, what did the guy score on the Wonderlic?For those of you who aren’t familiar with NFL draft protocol, the Wonderlic is a sort of IQ exam the league makes potential draftees take once they leave college. It grades players on a score of one to 50, and the questions are legendarily basic — a typical question might be “Paper sells for 21 cents a pad. What do four pads cost?”
Players get asked 50 of those questions, and some players don’t do so well. Vince Young is said to have scored a six, which is pretty damn low, but we have to wonder now about Cleveland Browns nose tackle Shaun Rogers. How would he have answered this question, for instance:
“If you bring a loaded .45-caliber handgun into an airport, and try to check it through a metal detector before boarding a flight, you are: a) a fucking moron; b) probably too dumb to be carrying a pistol in the first place; or c) about to get bounced from Roger Goodell’s Christmas-card list.”
Rogers is a 300-pound load who has been mauling offensive linemen for years. Back in 2006, however, he was suspended by the league for violation of the PED rules, apparently for taking a banned appetite suppressant that contained ephedrine. Rogers at the time said he had late-night cravings due to a sleeping disorder. One wonders if his sleep was disordered because he was taking speed.
Rogers could get anything from probation to five years in prison for carrying a concealed weapon (a felony in Ohio), and beyond that could face sanctions from Goodell under the NFL’s repeat-offender policy, although the commissioner might be preoccupied with another AFC North team right now, namely the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Double trouble
Speaking of which, the Ben Roethlisberger story is about to reach a head. Police and Georgia Bureau of Investigation agents are wrapping up their inquiry and are about to pass the results of it on to the district attorney’s office. A decision will then be made on whether to press charges against the Steelers quarterback for sexual assault.
The sequence of events, for those who missed it: on March 5, Roethlisberger went to a nightclub popular with college students in Milledgeville, Georgia. At the end of that night, a girl claimed Big Ben assaulted her in a bathroom while friends of his stood guard by the door. Roethlisberger spoke with police that night, but has since refused to be interviewed.
Meanwhile, Roethlisberger’s star wideout teammate, Santonio Holmes, will apparently face charges of assault for an incident that also took place in a nightclub — albeit one in Orlando, Florida — two days after the Roethlisberger incident. A woman named Ashonae Mills claims that Holmes threw a whiskey glass at her face, cutting her above the eye, in a dispute over a VIP seat in the club. She also claims that Holmes offered her money to stay quiet, and that two off-duty cops pressured her not to press charges.
