Carlee Roethlisberger knew the question was coming. Even though Roethlisberger is a forward for the Oklahoma women’s basketball team, she faced a different and difficult subject during Big 12 Media Day at the Sprint Center last October.

Just a few days earlier, her brother, Pittsburgh quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, returned to play after serving a four-game suspension for violating the league’s personal-conduct policy and helped the Steelers beat the Cleveland Browns.

Ben Roethlisberger’s ability as a football player was never in doubt. The issue was whether he could turn his life around after a second incident of being accused of sexual assault.

“He wants to be the same person that he’s always been on the football field,” Carlee said quietly, “but off the field, he’s needed to make a change, and with all my heart, I believe he has.”

She’s not alone. In the four months since NFL commissioner Roger Goodell reduced a six-week suspension to four weeks because of good behavior, Roethlisberger has tried shedding his image as a boorish and pampered athlete with a sense of entitlement.

Along the way, he has led the Steelers to their fourth AFC Championship game in his seven seasons and will face the New York Jets Sunday in Pittsburgh.

“He’s changed as a person,” said CBS analyst Phil Simms, who will call the game and meets with key players from each team in production meetings on the two days before games. “We see it when we meet with him. He’s extremely friendly, and he seems more at ease than I’ve ever seen him just as a person this year.

“A couple times, we’ve met him and talked to him, they were going through rough spots, and especially him with his foot, his nose … and being happy with (himself) has shown in his play. The guy is probably as relaxed a quarterback as I’ve seen in a long time.”

Roethlisberger ran his postseason record to 9-2 with last week’s come-from-behind victory over Baltimore in the divisional round of the playoffs, and last year joined Roger Staubach, Bernie Kosar, Tom Brady and Donovan McNabb as the only players to lead their teams to the conference title game at least three times in their first five seasons as a starting quarterback.

But it still may take a while for Roethlisberger, despite his two Super Bowl titles, to shed the stigma of his alleged off-field escapades.

“He’s accountable for his actions,” said former Steelers coach Bill Cowher, the man who drafted Roethlisberger in 2004. “Certainly, he recognizes that. He got the suspension and had a chance to sit back and reflect. The only thing that was going to take care of this was time. He said all the right things, he’s trying to do all the right things, but time will be the greatest measure of where he is.

“He walked into Pittsburgh as a young player, he got success early, and quite frankly, he got caught up in it. Unfortunately, a series of circumstances is going to allow him to appreciate where he’s at, and he has plenty of time to change the way people will perceive him off the field, because we all perceive him a certain way on the field.”

Roethlisberger, unlike his sister, ducked a question on a conference call Thursday when asked if he thought during the suspension that he’d get to another AFC Championship game so quickly.

“The great thing is that was so long ago, I forgot all about it,” Roethlisberger said. “Right now it is not about living in the past for me; it is about here and now and this game. We can’t really afford to look back and focus on the past. We have to do what we’ve got to do now, and that’s trying to win this game against a really good team.

“When it comes to being a person, I just try to be the person my parents raised me to be.”

Roethlisberger, 28, is one of only two active quarterbacks to win multiple Super Bowl titles. With wins tonight and in Super Bowl XLV in Dallas, he can match New England’s Brady with three championship rings.

Then, he’ll have plenty of time to catch and surpass Steelers legend Terry Bradshaw and San Francisco’s Joe Montana, who have four Super Bowl championships. And he’ll have an opportunity to completely repair his once-stained image.

“Your body of work and what you are off the field,” Cowher said, “is also a big part of how people will always remember you.”