Apparently Terrell Owens is not such a bad guy

[KFC]

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/sports/columnists/ann_killion/13130025.htm

Owens still has friends with 49ers

By Ann Killion

Mercury News Staff Columnist

When you're the NFL's biggest pariah, can you still have friends? When you're Public Enemy No. 1, does anyone still love you?

Apparently, yes.

Terrell Owens still has friends. Right here in San Francisco, with the team he supposedly torched.

``He's a good man,'' 49ers linebacker Julian Peterson said. ``He came from a different upbringing than most people, but if you sit down with him one-on-one, he's a great man, well-mannered, God-fearing.''

Tony Parrish has been to Atlanta to train with Owens.

``He opened up his home to me,'' said Parrish, a safety. ``He's never done wrong by me.''

<snip>

Eventually we learned that Owens' background was one of unbelievable sadness and deprivation. He lived with a strict, unloving grandmother who was an alcoholic and took him to visit bootleggers. His mother lived across town with his other siblings.

He was taunted for his awkwardness and dark skin. When he was a young teenager and developed a crush on a girl across the street, he was told abruptly by the girl's father to leave her alone. Why? Because she was his half-sister. The man he had lived across from all his life was the father he didn't know he had. He had few role models or order.

============================================

I'll cut the man some slack and wish him well.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

1. He's a grown man.

I've known a LOT of people who've grown up in equally bad environments, and still found their way to maturity. He's 31 (if I remember correctly). No excuse for acting like a child.

[patcox2]

5. In what way did he act like a child?

I would say that taking a silly game, football, seriously, is acting like a child. I would say that blind obedience to this cult of the NFL and these fantasies about the dignity and all of the "game" is pretty childish.

I think buying into the whole silly mystique of football and sports fandom is childish in the extreme. I find Payton Manning spouting off endless streams of sports cliches (its a team effort, we take it one game at a time, and the good lord willing, we'll get to the superbowl, and my coach is just swell, and I stick my ass up his head and kiss his ass from the inside out every day) is childish.

I don't think anything TO did is childish. I find the shitstorm tempest in a teapot that erupted over him doing the shocking and unbelievable act of simply answering a question with his honest opinion to be childish.

[WeRQ4U]

9. I'm sorry, but I couldn't disagree more.

While it's true that it's a game, it's also a business. That's his fricken job. This isn't like playing jacks on your parents kitchen floor. This is a BIG deal to the people who own and run the organization. It's a BIG deal to the other players on the team. And (GASP!!!) it's a BIG deal to NFL football fans. He gets paid ridiculous amounts of money by an organization to do one thing.....catch footballs. If you or I created that kind of shitstorm at OUR work, we'd be shown the door a hell of a lot quicker than he did. You think you'd get away with calling your coworkers Lazy on TV? You think you'd get away with picking a fight with one your coworkers... no wait...all you coworkers? You think you'd get away with calling out your manager or boss each and every time the national media gets a chance to talk to you? You think you'd get away with not coming to work, EVEN WHEN YOU'RE UNDER CONTRACT, becasue you're pissed off about how much money you make? FOrget it.

He acted like a moron. He deserved what happened to him. And regardless of his upbringing, if he's going to act like an asshole at work, and he's not the boss, he's going to get axed, and rightly so.

If I come to work with shit on my shoes, my boss isn't going to take into account that I grew up on a farm, he's gonig to send my ass home to change.

[tallahasseedem]

11. I completely agree.

I dont understand why this point gets lost in the argument.

[DrDan]

21. isn't it wierd that none of the other Eagles have come out

in support of McNabb?

[sasquatch]

2. At least he doesn't have a criminal record

The last I checked it isn't illeagal to have trouble maintaining a job.

[MrSlayer]

3. Lots of Eagles players still support him as well.

Hell, a lot of them still don't understand what happened or what the big deal was. A lot of them say they would take him back. This whole thing has been blown out of proportion and is ridiculous.

[Midlodemocrat]

4. Can you save me some time

and tell me why everyone is so mad at him? I missed something obviously.

[patcox2]

6. Okay, here is the short form.

A reporter asked "would you win more games with a different quarterback?" He said yes.

Shocking, I know.

Then he had the temerity to criticize his team. As we all know, only children speak their minds honestly. He had just scored his 100th career TD. Only 5 players in NFL history had done this. He expected the team to acknowledge it. They didn't. He said they had no class.

So that was it, he opened his mouth. American sportfans don't cotton to no uppity negroes cracking wise, do they? He didn't know his place, long and short.

[mac56]

14. That's BS and you know it.

He picked a fight with Hugh Douglas. That was when he "smoked his last cigarette". Don't make this out to be some kind of punishment for being a prophet in the wilderness.

[WeRQ4U]

16. That's so lame.

American sportfans don't cotton to no uppity negroes cracking wise, do they?

What a load of shit. :eyes: Poor TO, so oppressed. Give me fuckin' break.

[meow2u3]

7. I suggest TO get therapy

Not only can he afford it, he doesn't have to tell anyone but his fiancee he's getting help so he can resolve his painful childhood.

[Name removed]

8. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[tallahasseedem]

10. Apparently so.

She didn't care for the fact that I said something negative about him. Anyway.

[Patiod]

12. We've had to/gotten to watch him every night on local TV

Best entertainment around for the bargain. He's been acting like a fool for months now.

He causes trouble for the sake of causing trouble. Not just being "honest" about the team. Acting like a total asshole, and being incredibly disruptive.

Case in point - one of the under-coaches (defensive? offensive?) said "Hey, T.O." to him the first day of camp. T.O. had a FIT. He told Andy Reid that NO ONE was to speak to him without T.O. speaking first. He said that the coach saying "Hey, T.O." was "dissing" him. It was a HUGE issue.

Yes, you read that right. No one is to speak to him unless T.O. addresses them first. Including coaching staff.

Okay, YOU run a team with someone like that on it.

He disrupted the 49ers, he disrupted the Eagles. It's a shame he doesn't play an individual sport like tennis, where being an asshole (hello John McEnroe) is okay and may even win you games. But he plays a TEAM sport, where being a total asshole is not going to help your team get wins.

[Blackfish]

13. his mistake was criticizing his teammates...

instead of getting busted for drugs or beating his wife.

or killing someone outside a nightclub. but Ray Lewis is a great team player and a leader. and he's turned his life around.

[mac56]

15. BS. See above.

nm

[Blackfish]

17. the "fight"

between a player and a non-player in the locker room in which Douglas himself says no blows were landed?

[DainBramaged]

18. Looks like he kissed his Campbell's Soup commercial goodbye too

Boom, overnight, coming into prime soup season, the commercials with his Mom stop.

Open mouth, remove silver spoon, insert foot.

[Patiod]

19. Um, that would be his enemy/arch-rival Donovan McNabb

Donovan wasn't allowed to talk to him either.

:crazy:

[DainBramaged]

20. OOPS I am wrong, no soup for me.

Not being a fan of football or Campbells soup I apologize for getting everything confused. :dunce:

[KFC]

22. Kick for T.O.

Will it be the Jets, Redskins or Raiders?

[LeftyMom]

23. I'm guessing Oakland

They do love a headcase down there. :eyes: