PITTSBURGH - You see it all around town these days. The "Big Ben" signs gradually returning to the windows in working-class hillside neighborhoods. The No. 7 jerseys on the backs of suburban convenience-store clerks, grade-school teachers - even, strikingly, children.
Most prominently, you see it in how the discussion unfolds when talk turns to Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger. Instead of phrases like "criminal investigation," "NFL suspension" and "bad example," the words today are back to what they were a couple years ago: Completed passes. Makes things happen. Leader.
With the Steelers one green-and-white obstacle away from reaching their latest Super Bowl, the NFL star turned hero in free fall is, in the eyes of Pittsburgh fans, on the rise again - albeit gradually and, to hear some people tell it, provisionally.
"I was surprised," says Ray Skoff, 41, a lifelong Pittsburgher and Steelers season-ticket holder for two decades. "Behavior and attitude-wise, I believe he's done a total 180, how he presents himself on and off the field."
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Roethlisberger sat out the season's first four games on the orders of the NFL, which said he had violated the league's personal conduct policy - an outgrowth of a college student's accusations that he sexually assaulted her in Georgia last March. The quarterback was never prosecuted over what was the second such set of allegations against him.
Bar owner to roast bear
ST. PAUL, Minn. - A sports bar owner in Minnesota is showing his support for the Green Bay Packers in this weekend's game against the Chicago Bears in a very literal way - by roasting a bear.
Blake Montpetit, the co-owner of Tiffany Sports Lounge in St. Paul, says he plans to cook a 180-pound black bear in a pig-roaster over hickory and charcoal today. He says his cousin shot it in northern Wisconsin during bear hunting season, which runs in September and October, and then froze it.
Extra points
• Arizona Cardinals defensive tackle Darnell Dockett was added to the NFC Pro Bowl team Saturday as a replacement for Minnesota's Kevin Williams, himself a replacement for Detroit's Ndamukong Suh.
Williams' wife is expecting a child. Suh has a shoulder injury.
