Watch CBS News

Has Virtue KO'd T.O.?

The Philadelphia Eagles have expelled the rude, strutting rude wide receiver, Terrell Owens from their team and I desperately would like for the story to be about the triumph of virtue.

It probably isn't though, which is too bad — it would have made for a tidier column.

In the end, Terrell Owens will take his millions and his boundless bucket of personal entitlement to a new team that will give him millions more. The Gridiron God will probably not reward the worthy Eagles with a triumphant, movie-worthy season. The media-sports money machine will continue to create bad boy celebrities and profit from there downfall by ginning up more television ratings, Web pageviews and radio call-ins. And little boys playing touch football in schoolyards across America will probably not learn lifelong lessons about how me-firsters and bad sports never win in the long run.

But blast all that it; I'm going to give it a go and commence with my sworn duty to make something complex and ambiguous into something black and white and terribly simplistic and polemical.

Congratulations to the Philadelphia Eagles for doing the right thing.

No qualifiers, no hedges — they did good. They are now my second favorite team. T.O. is a bum and they dumped his boastful butt. What is important is that the team has acted against its financial interests in protecting its best interests.

On pure athletic accomplishment, Owens is the Eagles best player. Though they were in the Super Bowl last year, they have had a bunch of injuries that make the odds of a good post-season run this year much longer without Owens. They will still have the pleasure of paying the conceited rat his full salary even if they quarantine him. And they will have to spend more money on lawyer's fees defending themselves from a grievance filed by the millionaire's labor union.

So far, Philadelphia's fans seem to be with them. An online (yes, unscientific) poll on Philly.com showed that the 12,459 people who had voted as of 9:02 Tuesday morning supported the Eagles over T.O. Will this moral steadiness endure some heartbreaking losses? Will hell freeze over?

Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Phil Sheridanhas already found a possible scapegoat for Owens' troubles -- ESPN (ESPN.com first aired Owens' latest offenses). Sheridan quotes a great line -- that ESPN has become "Al-Jazeera for spoiled athletes."

We the media -- especially the sports press -- fawn over the players, cozy up to them, demand that they stay on script and dutifully provide their sound bites, while always goading them to make a gaffe, start a fight or commit a newsworthy blooper. And when they do -- they tear them down, demanding contrition and condemnation.

So it was that my son and I were driving to soccer practice on Sunday, getting the latest scores from ESPN radio when commentator and former NFL quarterback Sean Salisbury said he would give his full year's salary to anyone who could find a worse teammate than Terrell Owens at any level of any sport. This baffled the Bears fan in my back seat. As an avid consumer of "Sports Illustrated," he knew the gory details of Owens' past antics -- the gaudy touchdown prances, the public sleazy insinuation that one of his 49'er teammates was gay, undermining and insulting Donovan McNabb and carping that the Eagles didn't stop the game and set off fireworks when his highness caught his 100th touchdown pass.

My son, using the "duh" speech cadence all parents know well, said that almost all pro football players (except Bears) are "money-grubbing ego-maniacs." Owens is just more famous because he's a good player, he said, and punishing him doesn't make any sense.

Most fans probably agree and that's because we have become so tolerant of gargantuan servings of player and owner boorishness. In the NBA, as in politics, players get benched for bad behavior only when the indictment is near. In baseball, if the urine test is clear, you're clear. All our sports now reflect too much of the vulgarity, materialism, the absolute unbridled personal gluttony seen in the worst strands of popular music and entertainment. The non-entertainment, non-sports press and punditocracy doesn't take this stuff seriously and we ought to be ashamed of that.

Pro sports, like entertainment, needs and thus creates bad boys and bad girls. Their deviance is riveting and the way they embrace it for personal profit is mesmerizing, almost convincing grown-ups that our world is safer because maybe there are no consequences. That's why Martha Stewart didn't have a syndicated talk show and a reality series until after she was in prison. That's why Donald Trump didn't have a reality show and celebrity-based income until after he had gone bankrupt on a few ventures and divorced a few wives. That's why Paris Hilton was a nobody before the sex tapes got out.

Owens' sins, to be honest, were far less. He was the quintessential bad teammate, putting himself before the group with blatant arrogance and volume. But he wasn't violent, he didn't take drugs or embezzle or lie to prosecutors. He isn't facing indictment. He just flagrantly violated the basic code of sportsmanship most of us were taught in gym.

And that is exactly why the Eagles ought to be praised to the max for getting rid of him.


Dick Meyer, a veteran political and investigative producer for CBS News, is the Editorial Director of CBSNews.com, based in Washington.

E-mail questions, comments, complaints, arguments and ideas to
Against the Grain. We will publish some of the interesting (and civil) ones, sometimes in edited form.

By Dick Meyer

View CBS News In
CBS News App Open
Chrome Safari Continue
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.