Fever Gate?

How bad was Big Ben's fever?

By Joe StarkeyTRIBUNE-REVIEW
Wednesday, September 20, 2006

Bill Cowher showed up for his weekly news conference Tuesday in a predictably sour mood, only hours removed from perhaps the worst beating a Steelers offense has endured since he became coach in 1992.
One issue Cowher quickly attempted to clear, in the wake of a 9-0 loss to the Jacksonville Jaguars, was quarterback Ben Roethlisberger's fever.
Cowher said Roethlisberger did not have a 104-degree temperature, as was reported by Michele Tafoya on ESPN's Monday night broadcast.
"The fever was 100.4, not 104, OK?" Cowher said. "Somebody miscalculated a decimal point."
So, it was misreported?
"I don't know," Cowher said. "I didn't watch any pregame shows."
Tafoya, contacted by telephone last night, stood by her story. She'd heard that Roethlisberger had a cold and a high fever and checked it out with him.
"I spoke with Ben directly, 90 minutes before the game," said Tafoya, a sideline reporter. "I said, 'What's your temperature?' He said it was 104 at 2 o'clock. When he said that, I thought, 'I can't believe he's out here.' If he said 100.4 to me, I would have said, 'That's not very high, unless it's a toddler.' I never would have gone with anything I didn't believe he had said."
Chris Butler, M.D., a family practitioner with Premier Medical Associates in Monroeville, said a 104-degree temperature still is within range of a body's normal response to infection but that 105 or above would be considered a "pathological response."
"I would say in terms of a person's ability to function physically, I would be alarmed at 104," Butler said.
The situation evokes "Toe-Gate," which developed in the wake of the 2004 AFC Championship Game. Two days after he was intercepted three times in the Steelers' 41-27 loss to the New England Patriots, Roethlisberger told reporters he'd sustained two broken toes on his right foot during a first-half scramble.
A day later, Cowher forcefully denied the claim, saying, "We are unaware of any problems with his toes, OK? Ben does not have broken toes. I talked to Ben last night and got it straight from his mouth, and that's that."
Tafoya interviewed Roethlisberger after Monday's game and asked if he still had a fever.
"I'm not feeling too well," he said.
Certainly, the Steelers' offense was sickly. It produced just 26 rushing yards, the lowest total of Cowher's 15-year tenure.
Roethlisberger, under constant pressure, completed 17 of 32 passes for 141 yards, two interceptions and a passer rating of 38.7, fourth-lowest of his career. He was 15 days removed from an emergency appendectomy, which caused him to miss the season-opener, and barely three months removed from a near-fatal motorcycle accident that required seven hours of facial reconstruction surgery.