Mourning

I have spent the last three days in something resembling a state of mourning. Mild, yes, because nobody actually died, but mourning nonetheless. Terrell Owens was --is-- a great football player. He is a playmaker and someone defenses fear. He made the Cowboys a better team-- something his teammates acknowledged.* Most of them were surprised he was cut, and so far, I haven't heard of a one who says the team is better off without him. Most of them say the team is now worse without him. In fact, the only ones who are saying the team is better off without him is, you guessed it, the media. Last week, the Cowboys were favored to represent the NFC in SuperBowl XLIV. Now, no one thinks they'll even make the playoffs.

Terrell Owens is a good enough player that it only took him two days to find another team. The thing is, he just got there, and the headlines are already reading "Drama in Buffalo". That was his biggest problem. The media just wouldn't leave him alone. He couldn't even pick his nose without huge headlines splashed all over everywhere saying "Owens boogers in Dallas" or something equally ridiculous. It'll be the same in Buffalo, and it saddens me to know how many Buffalo fans will be taken in by that. And much of it wasn't even true. T.O. got a bad rap from the media, just because he was T.O. Shortly after the season ended, I wrote a post that I regret not getting posted. I'd intended to find and link all these interviews that I'd taken these quotes from before posting it, but then I got so sick and it all fell by the wayside.

I decided to post it anyway, without the links, and out of date as it now is. Here it is:

Chris Collinsworth is an idiot. Earlier this season, during the pre-game show before the Cowboys-Giants game, he said that Terrell Owens is a cancer and Dallas would never be able to accomplish anything until he is gone.

He was at it again at the Pro Bowl. He said that Ray Lewis needs to go to Dallas and put an end to all the fighting and bickering that's going on down there. He said that somebody needs to put a tent over that circus. He said, "so much talent and they wasted it with all the infighting and bickering."

It amazes me how he knows so much considering he wasn't even there. And what saddens me more is that there are going to be so many morons out there who actually believe what he is saying. As if it were true.

Back to the cancer remark. Ever since he said that, people have been commenting, posting on message boards, e-mailing the site, calling into the radio shows parroting this very statement. T.O is a cancer. He's got to go. Because he's so disruptive. Because he's such a cancer, you know.

IN fact, it seems that everyone is calling T.O. a cancer and saying he's go to go except for---What's that, you say?--his team mates. That's right. His team mates. In all this talk and blather, I have yet to hear a single one of Terrell Owens' team mates say anything negative about him. Patrick Crayton and Roy Williams neither one say he's a problem, and he were, they would be the ones to know. Jason Witten says this whole thing is blown way out of proportion. Tony Romo says, sure he wants the ball more, but if you asked every player in the league that same question, every one of them would say the same thing. Jason Witten said he wants the ball more, but nobody cared about that, because he isn't Terrell Owens. Tony also says that when T.O tries to step up and be a leader, he's being made out by the media to be the bad guy. T.O. comes off the field yelling, screaming, and cussing, and the media spotlights him, saying, "there he goes again. " Full back Deon Anderson says, "I come off the field after every play yelling, screaming, and cussing everybody out, but nobody cares because I'm not T.O." Even DeMarcus Ware says that T.O. has been trying to keep things low key. When asked earlier this year if T.O. would be back, DeMarcus replied, "He's a playmaker. He's a leader. We need him."

But what about all those stories about him being divisive in the locker room? Bradie James said it best when he said, "When he was in San Francisco, it was 'Jerry Rice says...'. When he was in Philadelphia, it was 'Donovan McNabb says...'. Now he's here in Dallas, and it's 'Anonymous sources say...'. When I was in junior high, high school, college, if I didn't cite my sources, I got a flat zero. It's the same with this. Until you put a name to those sources, it's all make believe."

People read this stuff on the internet or in the newspaper, or they see it one TV, and they believe it.

They assume that just because some reporter who's job it is to find stories says it, it must be true. And we know that no reporter would ever make anything up, right Dan Rather? As for me, until Terrell Owens' team mates begin calling him out, until those who are in the locker room with him begin calling him a cancer, until those who play the game with him begin saying he's got to go, I hafta agree with Bradie:

It's all make believe.

It's all make believe. Bradie went on to say in that interview that if he didn't know better, from what he read, he would have thought they'd had to call the National Guard in to break up stuff in their locker room. Part of the problem, especially with the accessibility of the internet, is that literally anyone can publish literally anything, and someone somewhere is going to be stupid enough to believe it.

Take last month, for example. Some yahoo on Yahoo posted that Terrell Owens stormed into Jerry Jones office, demanded that he cut Tony Romo and draft Colt McCoy. Yes, Colt McCoy had said that he wanted to return for his senior year at Texas, but Owens felt that if Jones offered him enough money, he could convince him to go ahead and declare for the draft.

Now, that's the most rididulous thing I'd ever read. No way is Jerry Jones going to cut his $67 million franchise quarterback, and even if Colt did declare for the draft, there's no guarantee that he'll still be around when the Cowboys get to their first draft pick, which is the 51st overall, not to mention that while all this was allegedly going on, Jerry Jones was down in Mobile for the Senior Bowl. Nonetheless, there were people out there who actually believed that this incident really occurred.

That's the stuff the media feeds on. There is no such thing as integrity among reporters any more. So take what you read and hear --especially about Terrell Owens-- with a grain of salt because most of it won't be true. But you can believe his former team mates:

This team just got worse.


*Talkin Cowboys, Friday 3/6/09--when finding out that he had been cut, several of Terrell Owens former Cowboys teammates were heard to say, "This team just got worse."