AMERICA AT LARGE:IF THERE'S one thing American fans love more than rooting for the underdog, it's betting for the underdog, which might help to explain why the underdog has already become the overdog.

All logic would seem to argue for the Pittsburgh Steelers’ chances against the Green Bay Packers in Super Bowl XLV a week from Sunday in Dallas. The Steelers finished the regular season 12-4 and were the second-seeded team in the AFC, while the Packers (10-6) didn’t nail down the final NFC seed until the final game of the season, and had to win three play-off games on the road to earn their way to Cowboys Stadium. As a franchise, Pittsburgh will be playing in its eighth Super Bowl, more than any other team, and will be trying to win a record seventh championship.

Ambassador Rooney is a beloved NFL owner, and Troy Polamalu everybody’s favourite player. But fans, particularly those of the female persuasion, are going to find it difficult to make an emotional investment in a team quarterbacked by an accused rapist.

The authorities might have reluctantly declined to prosecute Ben Roethlisberger for what did or did not happen in the course of that quickie consummated in the toilet of a Georgia saloon last March, but NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell found enough merit in the account of Roethlisberger’s 20-year-old victim that he suspended the Pittsburgh quarterback for the first six games of the regular season (the penalty was later reduced to four) and ordered him into counselling.

That might account for an visceral anti-Steelers bias among more than half the electorate, but sentiment is not a consideration when the actuaries in Las Vegas make the betting line. Their calculation attempts to pinpoint a line of demarcation that will be equally attractive to the partisans of each side. The 2½-point spread favouring the Packers was issued minutes after the Steelers had ousted the New York Jets on Sunday evening, meaning that the punters have had four full days to disprove the wisdom of that calculation, and so far it hasn’t moved a tick.

Between his own performance and that of his team, Roethlisberger has more or less enjoyed a free ride from the media over the course of the season, but lest Big Ben be lulled into a false sense of security, even he is surely aware that is about to change. Roethlisberger had better enjoy the temporary respite offered by the fortnight before the Super Bowl, because once the teams hit Texas this Sunday there are going to be 2,000 reporters waiting like piranhas to revisit the story.

The off-week that has delayed Roethlisberger’s inquisition has, in the meantime, focused more than its share of unwanted attention on a quarterback who isn’t even playing in the Super Bowl.

Chicago’s Jay Cutler, who had not been particularly effective in the first half of Da Bears’ NFL title game against the Packers, took himself out of the line-up for most of the second half, citing a knee injury the severity of which has been the source of debate since.

In light of Cutler’s checkered medical history and his well-earned reputation as a chronic moaner, his mettle has been questioned by a host of fellow players, by inquisitive reporters and by such an preponderance of Bears fans that it is difficult to imagine he can ever regain their support.

(One running joke in Chicago this week: What’s the difference between Jay Cutler and a baby? A: The baby eventually stops crying.)

The issue was compounded by the fact that when Fox searched through its footage hoping to show the precise play on which Cutler had been injured, there was no evidence of trauma to be found, and of course it didn’t help his cause that Cutler couldn’t recall when the injury, ostensibly to his left knee, occurred.

Sideline cameras repeatedly showed him, bundled up in a cloak and in no evident distress, while his 39-year-old back-up Todd Collins, and then the back-up’s back-up, Caleb Hanie, struggled to keep pace in what became a 21-14 loss. By nightfall in Chicago, Twitter was circulating photos of Bears fans burning Cutler’s number six jersey in effigy.

Cutler’s non-medical diagnosis of his injury was, “It really hurt”. Explanations like that don’t cut much ice in the macho world of the NFL. A post-game diagnosis revealed Cutler’s injury to be a strained medial collateral ligament. “I played 14 games this year with one of those,” said Jacksonville Jaguars’ running back Maurice Drew-Jones.

After the loss, the Bears, almost to a man, publicly expressed their confidence in Cutler’s “toughness”, but you do wonder what the players might be saying to each other. One suspects many might agree with Jones-Drew.

Two episodes from the second half of the game bear revisiting. One was that Collins was on such a short leash the Bears couldn’t even wait until the fourth period to get Hanie into the game. When he took the field with 57 seconds left in the third quarter it meant that, under the rules governing an “emergency” quarterback, Smith could not have used Cutler or Collins again had Hanie been injured.

The other is the recollection of a forlorn Cutler, lounging on the bench, only to be literally chased out of his seat by a posse of Chicago defensive players when they came off the field following a change of possession. So much for the team’s once and future leader.

Fox columnist Jayson Whitlock spoke for many when he accused Cutler of “hiding behind a knee injury”, and said, perhaps unkindly, “I don’t need an MRI to confirm that King Cutler quit. If they gave me a $50 million contract and Todd Collins was my back-up, you’d have to fight me to get me off the field in the NFC Championship game.”

Whether Jay Cutler could have continued to play, and done so effectively, only he knows, but his widespread vilification (as, among other things, “a pussy”) by non-Bear NFL players is interesting, because to the best of our knowledge not a single NFL player, friend or foe, has ever once publicly questioned Roethlisberger’s actions in the jacks down in Milledgeville last March.

However real or imagined his injury, Cutler has been adjudged guilty of violating some medieval man-code, and as big as the story has been these past few days, you won’t read another word about it once the Steelers and Packers get to Texas on Sunday night.

But you have to wonder if Cutler will ever get his team back. In what has emerged as an erosion of respect, one suspects he won’t.