I Spit In Your Face

When you watch ESPN after anything happens with Terrell Owens, you get a sense of hypocrisy.  Let’s take this latest incident where he spit in DeAngelo Hall’s face.  Wait this is the same DeAngelo Hall that took a cheap shot at Rudi Johnson’s knees in week 8.  At least getting spit on doesn’t injure you.  ESPN talks about Tank Johnson and his off the field issues by simply stating what happened.  They don’t dig deep into his character and talk about him being a problem for his team.   I know T.O. has done a lot in his tenure as an NFL receiver do deserve attention, but maybe everyone should just state the facts and move on.  Is it really necessary to talk every week about how he’s such a problem and how something needs to be done before it blows up in their face.  Well, based on what they’ve said from the beginning, the Cowboys should be feeling the backlash by now.  You don’t have to like T.O. because of all the things he’s done, but you sure can ignore it.  My god it’s the only way Cowboys fans can continue to like their team.  This isn’t a defense of Terrell Owens, but rather a story about the focus of the people at ESPN.When Chad Johnson trash talks, everybody laughs.  When Steve Smith can’t play because of his pulled hamstring people hope he comes back soon.  When DeAngelo Hall takes a shot at Rudi Johnson’s legs, it goes overlooked.  Now at the other spectrum we see Terrell Owens hurting his hamstring and it’s a problem.  “Here we go again” they say.  Here what goes again I ask?  Are the Cowboys not 9-5 and in lead of their division.  Did Mike Ditka thinks the Cowboys need to get rid of T.O.  Does that mean Dallas didn’t need his 11 touchdowns this year?  I’m sure Patrick Crayton could easily take his place.  By the way, 1969 was the last time a Dallas receiver had that many touchdowns.  That means it’s more than Michael Irvin the possible hall-of-famer.  Let’s also throw in that Terrell Owens broke his finger and tore ligaments in his hand.  Oh Michael Irvin didn’t have issues now did he?  Is it better to spit in someone’s face or get in trouble with the law.  Apparently to ESPN spitting is the ultimate crime.

Now I can’t say that I don’t watch ESPN, but sometimes I seriously consider turning the channel.  It’s not that they don’t no anything, but most people out there watching know why they talk about T.O.  In fact when recapping the Dallas-Atlanta game, they spent five minutes talking about the spitting incident, but didn’t even mention the injury to his hand that needs surgery. Terrell decided to hold off `til after the season to have this surgery, but that just wouldn’t make for a good story.  Now what about Tank Williams?  Why don’t they talk about his character?  It’s because most people don’t know who he is.  Can’t send time discussing someone that people have to look up on a website to learn about him.  They feed off the fact that problems were present in the past for T.O. and don’t want to tarnish reputations of players that are currently admired.  So that’s why hamstring injuries to Hines Ward and Steve Smith at the beginning of the season were considered injuries, while T.O. was faking and no one knew if he was really hurt.  Again why do they care?  He’s having one of the best seasons for any Cowboys receiver in history and ESPN can’t even mention the importance of those 11 touchdowns.  They need some focus, because even if people love to hate Owens and enjoy hearing about his antics, the bottom line is that it doesn’t affect the team in a negative way.  They want it to, but he’s not calling out teammates and they aren’t paying attention to him.  They know that ignoring it is the best way to deal with it and ESPN should do the same.  T.O. says that Parcells never talked to him after his accidental overdose and that’s exactly what he needed to do.  If you don’t discuss it then it won’t spread to the rest of the team.  That’s where the Eagles went wrong.  They let it affect the team by getting upset and bickering, but I don’t think you’ll ever see Tony Romo get heated like McNabb used to get.  They all learned that he’s going to do things, but if you take it with a grain of salt, you’re much better off.

All in all you can say what you want and think what you want, but the only thing that’s factual are stats.  The stats show us that T.O. has the most receiving touchdowns since Lance Rentzel in 1969.  He is the first Dallas receiver since Rocket Ismail in 1999 to break 1,000 yards.  Evidence to how much the offense has improved with T.O. being there is also obvious.  The Cowboys have the first 1,000-yard rusher (Julius Jones) since 2001 when Emmitt Smith had 1,021.  In that same year the entire team only had 8 rushing touchdowns; Marion Barber has 11 rushing touchdowns alone this season.  Terry Glenn is currently 79 yards away from breaking the century mark and the last time two receivers have reached this in the same season was 1979.  What we see is a much-improved offense that is strongly influenced by the play of Terrell Owens, not the misbehavior.  Now to put a nice little cherry on top let’s ponder something for a second.  Terrell Owens has dropped 15 passes this season, at least 3 being definite touchdowns.  That would have put him at 14 touchdowns with two games left, tied for a Cowboy record that’s stood since 1962.  So before we go overboard like Mike Ditka and suggest cutting him loose, let’s think about what we’re losing and figure out if that would really be the best thing for THE TEAM.  He didn’t just spit in DeAngelo Hall’s face, he also beat him twice for touchdowns.  I will never justify spitting in someone’s face, but I do believe that performance outweighs character.  After all Ray Lewis was charged with murdering someone, but with plea bargains and testifying against others the charges were reduced.  That’s been all but forgotten because so many people like Ray Lewis.  Murder for crying out loud and we have to talk about how bad spitting is.  Hopefully someday I can turn on ESPN and not feel disappointed with the hypocrisy that they show on a daily basis.  Talk about the games please, not the jerks that spit at one another.