On Tuesday, Steelers linebacker James Harrison was handed his latest $25,000 fine for his roughing the passer penalty against the Bills. After the announcement hit the media, Harrison’s head coach Mike Tomlin and teammate Ryan Clark voiced their ridiculous grievances about the fine.

While we spent the entire day yesterday discussing how dirty of a player James Harrison has become, his coach decided to drum up the sympathy in an interview with Alex Marvez and Rich Gannon on Sirius NFL Radio. What about the children, Tomlin whined. Well, that wasn’t exactly word-for-word, but it was close. “He’s got two kids. That’s some serious college schooling right there potentially for those kids 16, 18 years from now.”

Michael David Smith on ProFootballTalk.com set the Steelers head coach straight in his post on Tomlin’s comments.

Just with the money Harrison has made so far in his NFL career, he could have set aside enough to pay for both of his kids to get doctorates from Harvard and still have many millions of dollars left over. If the money Harrison has been fined this year is the difference between Harrison paying for his kids’ college education and his kids not being able to afford college, then Harrison has seriously mismanaged his money.


Ryan Clark, who has had a history of the dramatics, called for a protest through twitter in support of number 92’s latest fine. The tweet read, “New break: Steeler D will protest this Sunday in the wake of #92 latest fine by hitting harder and more vicious. Since they fine either way!” I think he meant “news break,” but I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt on that part of the tweet.

Whether you think Harrison’s hit on Fitzpatrick was clean or not, we can all agree that Clark’s comments do nothing but draw the referee’s attention on the Steelers defense on Sunday night. I guess Ravens fans should be thanking him.