Near the end of his post-Super Bowl trek around Switzerland in early May, Ben Roethlisberger had grown comfortable enough in his ancestral homeland to venture out on his own. In Zurich, he clicked off his hotel TV, pulled the hood of his thick, gray sweatshirt up over his head and walked off into the cavernous cobblestone alleyways that transport visitors back to the 16th century. After a short distance, Roethlisberger found himself on the narrow limestone quays of the Limmat River, where he paused for a few minutes to enjoy his first real moment of solitude in months.
Steadying himself on a ledge, Roethlisberger closed his eyes. He listened to the river roaring beneath him. He felt the mist from the water and smelled the tobacco and espresso from a nearby cafe. Even with his eyes shut, he could imagine the skyline around him, the majestic church spires and, in the distance, the ubiquitous snow-covered peaks of the Alps. "It was kind of a weird feeling, actually," he said later. "Things have been so crazy the past few months. So I just took a moment to count my blessings and think of all that's happened. I got a real sense of peace."
By the time he opened his eyes, though, Roethlisberger was surrounded. Gawkers, wellwishers and autograph seekers were hugging him, tugging at his clothes and jumping on his back. Before it escalated out of control, the QB bolted back to the safety of his hotel and his escorts from the Swiss government, who had arranged this trip to encourage Americans of Swiss decent to explore their heritage.
A natural scrambler since his days at Findlay (Ohio) High, Roethlisberger suddenly felt trapped. The stardom that had given him the means and privilege to travel around the world with his family—mom Brenda, dad Ken and little sister Carlee—had also left him confined to his fancy hotel room watching repeats of MTV's Real World dubbed in German. "Dealing with people, representing things bigger than yourself, it's the subtitle of being an NFL quarterback," he said. "I'm still growing to accept all of this. There are times when it does feel like, hey everybody, I'm only 24."
This story was originally supposed to be about the rest of Big Ben's summer vacation, an exhausting and exhilarating whirlwind of selfdiscovery that took him from the breathtaking peaks of the Swiss Alps to the quixotic capital city of Bern and across the lush green plains and coffee-colored soil of his great-greatgrandfather's home near Lauperswil.
That all changed on the morning of June 12, when Roethlisberger's motorcycle collided with a car near the 10th Street bridge in Pittsburgh. Roethlisberger was not wearing a helmet, nor is he licensed to operate a motorcycle. After three days in the hospital and seven hours of surgery to repair several facial fractures, he's expected to make a full recovery in time for the Steelers' season opener on Sept. 7. Yet the complicated issues that are twisted up in the mangled wreckage of his Suzuki motorcycle aren't all that different from the things he's been struggling with since becoming the youngest quarterback to win the Super Bowl.
Whether on the streets of Pittsburgh or Zurich, the issues remain the same: Where does an athlete's personal freedom end and his responsibility to his team, his fans and his sport begin? And how much leeway, if any, should we afford our youngest superstars while they learn to balance the fruits of fame against the demands of owners, coaches, sponsors and fans? "People have lost sight of the bottom line in all of this, that a kid got in a motorcycle accident," says Jerry Snodgrass, a confidante of the Roethlisbergers and the athletic director at Findlay High. "Right now, this isn't the Super Bowl star, the face of the NFL or the quarterback of the Steelers. This is somebody's son. We should care less if he ever plays another day of football. The only thing that matters is that Ben gets healthy."
Well, not to those whose knee-jerk response to the accident was to question Roethlisberger for selfishly jeopardizing the Steelers' chance at a repeat—the message being, essentially, that we're all perfectly okay with you risking serious injury, Ben, as long you're doing it solely for our entertainment on a football field.
Bengals QB Carson Palmer, an admitted Steelers hater, found the initial reaction to the accident so callous that he felt compelled to come to Roethlisberger's defense. "He went through seven hours of surgery," Palmer said. "The last thing he needs right now is guys banging on him for not wearing a helmet. The guy is hurting."
In the aftermath of the accident, a shaken Roethlisberger was apologetic and contrite. "By the grace of God, I'm fortunate to be alive," he said in a statement. "In the past few days, I've gained a new perspective on life."
Roethlisberger first sought that fresh point of view in Findlay, where he returned just six days after the Super Bowl victory parade in Pittsburgh. The first night back, Snodgrass helped him sneak into his high school's gym to shoot hoops. As he fired away for an hour, he didn't mention one word about the season. Instead, he talked about getting away during the summer, saving money for retirement and listening to updates about his high school buddies. "We've all been wondering what was next for Ben," says Snodgrass. "Not as a football player but as a person. Would the success he's had unburden him? Would it allow him to be more of the real him and less of the role he thinks he has to play as an NFL star?"
During his six days in Switzerland, Roethlisberger vacillated between those two personas. The cool and distant QB diva would appear, then up would pop the big, goofy happy-go-lucky kid from Findlay and Miami of Ohio. Those close to him say he's reached the pinnacle of his sport and a crossroads in his life at the same time. And sometimes he switches directions in the same breath. "As athletes, when you have some success, it's important to step back and see that there are whole other worlds out there beyond just America and the Super Bowl," he said, a few minutes into a train ride to the Swiss Alps. "But shoot," he added moments later, "that doesn't mean I'm gonna convert to Swiss, get a passport and just start living over here or anything."
In Switzerland, watching Roethlisberger stay poised while being pulled in 10 directions, you could almost see a thought bubble forming above his head. I 'm 24. I make some 20 mil a year. I 'm the most successful third-year quarterback in the history of the NFL. And yet, coaches plan my days down to the minute. Trainers tell me what to eat and drink. Nike tells me what to wear. My agent tells me where to go and what to say. Even my freakin' vacation has been mapped out by someone else.
When asked about his motorcycle riding in 2005, Roethlisberger responded, "You're just out there riding and you're free. And I'm a man, I can make my own decisions."
Personal freedom is not an excuse for riding without a helmet or a license. It is, though, one insight into the most maddening part of the whole ordeal, the question of why. Why in the world would young athletes with everything to live for—Roethlisberger, Kellen Winslow Jr., Jay Williams, to name just three—repeatedly risk their lives on motorcycles?
Like Winslow and Williams once were, Roethlisberger is as fearless as he is naïve. And after a while, mounting responsibilities become something like the Swiss Alps: At first you're in awe, but pretty soon you can't help but take their magnitude for granted. What's more, the irony behind these accidents is that our typical response (What about the team? What about the fans? What a spoiled idiot!) is exactly the kind of thinking that puts these guys on their bikes in the first place. For sudden superstars burdened by the expectations of excellence, riding is an escape, a visceral expression of their evaporating independence.
Much has been made about Big Ben's sleek, supercharged cycle, the one so slickly marketed as the fastest production bike on the planet. By contrast, he traveled to his first stop in Switzerland on an old-fashioned push scooter, perhaps the slowest production bike on the planet. The dramatic drop in velocity did little to dampen Roethlisberger's enthusiasm. He jumped a curb and sped across a 200-meter-high cobblestone bridge before fishtailing to a stop at the foot of Zytgloggeturm, Bern's colossal and brilliantly colored 15th-century clock tower.
Later, Roethlisberger took in an Americanstyle football game played on a 90-yard field, with one official working the sideline with Feldschlösschen beer in his back pocket. Then he drove down country roads so narrow that edelweiss tickled both sides of the car. He saw the farmhouse where the family name (spelled Rotlyschtbarger) is still carved into a doorframe. He ate from ceremonial cheese wheels the size of manhole covers, listened to an army of alphorns and was left speechless by the energy and passion of the people, and by the history, culture and stunning beauty of his familial homeland. He even tried his hand at Swiss hornussen, a game much like golf—if it had been invented by Dr. Seuss. "You know when all this will hit me, when it will really mean a lot?" Roethlisberger said on the last day. "When the season cranks back up again, and things get crazy with the heat and the pressure and the attention, and everything's going 100 mph. That's when I'll think of Switzerland, and I'll laugh and smile and calm down. Switzerland will be my stress reliever, my peace."
As Roethlisberger spoke, the train he was on clacked to a halt at his final destination: the mountain peak of Jungfraujoch (elevation: 11,782 feet). After stopping for a bratwurst and a family snowball fight two miles above sea level, Roethlisberger went to the edge of the observation platform, cupped his hands over his face and squinted hard, trying to capture one of the world's most spectacular views.
On a clear day, he would have been staring down at a panorama of 10,000-foot peaks, a blue-and-white glacier 25 kilometers long, and the landscape of three countries. But whiteout conditions left him standing in three feet of fresh powder, unable to see two feet in front of his face.
Roethlisberger was on top of the world. At the time, though, he just couldn't see it.