T.O

Prop 1 (originally posted December 6)

The story is finally over and it can said with some certainty...
TO is a helluva ballplayer but he's not very bright.

His first agent falls asleep at the switch and he misses the free agency filing deadline. A dummy move unprecedented in the annals of pro sports especially when he was dying to get out of SF. I mean calling his qb gay in the press, cursing out coaches on national TV dying to get out. Remember this back in 2004? Not his fault? Ok. Bad agent? Alright. So he fires his agent, hires a new one and a judge sets him free. Happy he signs with Baltimore. Cool. But then he thinks about it and backs out, dissing the [Baltimore] Ravens in the process. Not cool. So he pulls out another legal maneuver and signs again, but this time with Philly. In interviews he's gushing all over McNabb (kiss-kiss-kiss-kiss). All good right? Not so fast. Union Prez Gene Upshaw told the man, told him, Philly was giving him a bum deal, he said he understood and took it anyway. One legendary
Super Bowl performance later and all was forgiven. The hating, the nut-behavior, the "sharpie"... as if it never happened. Terrell Owens is a Hall-of-famer, now!

You know. I could re-hash the last couple of months. That would be easy. Right up to Arlen Specter's talking about bringing TO's case to the senate floor. But at the end of the day, more can be learned from his mistakes, and they are at least the following:

1. Philly sports fans like their [Black] athletes quiet. None of this rabble rouser new negros showin out stuff. Get in line ni&&@! Dick Allen (Phillies), Charles Barkley, AI, each Black, talented and very, very loud all had problems in the city of Brotherly Love. Bad fit TO.

2. Football is not basketball. Pro Football got it's start in the coal mines, factories and steel mills of Pennsylvania and Ohio. A tough, no nonsense, shut-up and do as your told world. TO's primadonna is out of step.

3. TO signed a contract. Philly had no reason to re-negotiate. They held all the cards and had his name written in blood. The League let him out of his first deal with the Ravens and perhaps he was naive enough to think they'd let him out of this one too. Psyche.

4. The Eagles are cheap. History has shown that Philly does not pay their players and TO was under contract. What did he expect?

5. TO signed a 50 million dollar contract. 50 million?!! He gets no sympathy from the average fan. None.

6. Bombs, end-arounds, the blitz... football has strong military roots. The military is about a group thinking and acting as one. Football works much the same way. It's about the team. TO has earned the reputation of someone who doesn't care about "team". Lookin' bad for the Black man.

At the end of the day, it's like I said in the beginning, he should have signed with B-More. True he wouldn't have had a QB, but it was a better environment for him, which is why I suspect he signed with Philly. He looked at the Eagles and saw a SF clone, a team he could mentally and physically dominate. In Baltimore, on the other hand, there's Ray "Murder", Ed Reed, Jonathan Ogden, Orlando Brown, Jamal Lewis (served time), Deion Sanders, a GM who was a hall-of-fame player and a head coach who coached Randy Moss. Plus since the Ravens won the 2002 super bowl they weren't desperate for his services like Philly was who couldn't seem to get over the proverbial hump. Perhaps he saw Philly as an enabler, as easy and this was perhaps his biggest mistake. In the Qu'ran God says that God will never change a people until they themselves change.

Time for TO to change