The Pittsburgh Steelers shocked the sports world by trading Super Bowl XLIII MVP wide receiver Santonio Holmes to the New York Jets for a lowly fifth round draft pick, a 155th overall with no additional compensation. Wow! Jeez! WTF??

Holmes had gotten deeply into the doghouse through his off-field behavior of late when he was accused of throwing a cocktail at a woman in an Orlando night club and cutting her. This wasn’t his first off-field incident involving police intervention.

Both Holmes and Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger brought shame upon the staid Steelers during the off-season with their high-profile antics. Trading a starting quarterback would have been cataclysmic; the Steelers would have had to rebuild their offense from the ground up. Therefore, they chose the next best thing, a seemingly untouchable team hero with a year left on his contract. Think Ben will get the message?

Meanwhile, the authorities in Georgia decided not to charge Roethlisberger with assault on the young woman with whom he allegedly had a scene in a night club bathroom. Will Big Ben realize how fortunate he is to have dodged this bullet?

I don’t know. Roethlisberger does not seem to have his head on straight. You would have thought that the motorcycle accident while not wearing a helmet might have knocked some sense into him. He swore he would never do that again — for the team’s sake — but since then, he has found another field of nefarious endeavour — babes. He still has the Tahoe case hanging over him. He needs to learn to conduct his off-field affairs with some class.

I feel that the Steelers organization will probably dump Roethlisberger if he commits one more off-field indiscretion. Trading Holmes had better convince Ben that they’re serious about team discipline.

The league is serious about this off-field crap, too. Rumor has it that Holmes will be suspended for four games for violation of the NFL’s substance abuse policy. The Steelers probably had a heads-up on that before they pulled the trigger on this astounding trade.