Misunderstood? Terrell Owens wants to clear misperceptions
Friday, September 25, 2009
He bought them for $137,000 on Rodeo Drive while cameras from his VH1 reality show rolled. They could be seen glittering when he took his helmet off on the sideline last week, even from the upper deck of Ralph Wilson Stadium.
"I always wear them," he says, smiling his Cheshire cat smile. "I think people call them my signature earrings."
The Bills beat the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in Owens' first home game in his fourth NFL city. That night, he watched the Dallas Cowboys play their first game in their spanking-new, state-of-the-art $1.3 billion stadium.
Owens, 35, thought he would get to play in that palace fitting his outsized celebrity. Instead, he watched on TV as his former team played in the highest-rated regular-season game since last century.
"The Ralph," as the Bills' home is known locally, opened in 1973 with a price tag of $22 million — relative pocket change under couch cushions in the luxury boxes at Cowboys Stadium.
"You could probably sit this one inside that one," Owens says of his new stadium. If that sounds wistful, like a headliner unhappy playing off-Broadway, Owens insists that is not the case.
"The stadium is a stadium," he says. "It's not going to win you any games. It's good, luxury-wise, but you still have to play the game in between those white lines. … It doesn't bother me to be in Ralph Stadium or the Taj Mahal."
Fans in Buffalo chanted his initials last weekend. They wore blue No. 81 jerseys. They murmured collectively when Owens dropped a perfectly placed pass. And they cheered madly when he caught a 43-yard touchdown strike.
"These people eat, breathe and sleep Buffalo Bills," Owens says. "We get shown so much love."
The Owens timeline is well known. Grew up poor in Alabama, played under the radar at Tennessee-Chattanooga, broke into the NFL with the San Francisco 49ers as the other wide receiver to Jerry Rice.
Today he has 140 receiving touchdowns, behind only Rice's 197 in NFL history. Yet Owens' records are less well known than the various controversies that led to his leaving the 49ers, Philadelphia Eagles and Cowboys.
"Yeah, that is always going to be a knock," he says. "And I think it's very unfortunate. Since leaving Philadelphia, I kind of felt like I left those two teams prematurely. Only because of how the media spins, you know, they misinterpreted something I said."
And this is the theme of a one-hour conversation. Owens says he is misunderstood. He says the news media take what he says and twist it into something else and that's how he gets in trouble. He wants you to know he's really just a nice, charitable guy who can run and catch.
"The people who really know me … know my heart," he says. "They know I didn't mean anything. I didn't say anything intentionally. It wasn't malicious. And when people try to make me out to be the bad guy, and say something, and make me, to the public, say something that I didn't mean, then that's when I have to try to explain myself."
And that's why, Owens says, he has imposed a sort of modified gag order on himself. He will talk midweek when it is required by the league, he says, but not so much otherwise. He did not talk to reporters after the Bills' first game, a Monday night loss to the New England Patriots, or after Sunday's win against the Buccaneers.
"It's not mandated that I have to talk to the media after the game," Owens says. "We have captains on this team. … Why can't the captains speak for the team? … And so now it's, like, I don't say anything. And now that's a story."
Two members of the Bills media relations department talked with Owens this week and told him the league does in fact expect him to talk to reporters after games.
"I feel I have been unfairly criticized in whatever I have to say," Owens says. "So it's a point where I'm getting frustrated. I don't want this to be a bad situation here in Buffalo."
Owens left those other NFL cities after various controversies, including remarks critical of quarterbacks Donovan McNabb in Philly and Tony Romo in Dallas.
Over the years, he also has been suspended for creative TD celebrations (49ers) and arguments with coaches (Eagles).
Living in the spotlight
The Bills signed Owens to a one-year, $6.5 million deal in March. "We got one of the premier playmakers in a playmakers' league," Bills general manager Russ Brandon said at the time.
Observers soon began to wonder when Owens might say something unkind about Bills quarterback Trent Edwards.
Last week, a couple of days after the Monday night loss, Owens said, "Trent has to better assess what he's seeing out there and take some shots down the field."
Owens got grilled on national talk shows, but some writers who cover the Bills locally thought Owens was on target. "I could see where he says he is misunderstood," says John Wawrow of the Associated Press in Buffalo.
Edwards did take shots downfield in last week's win, including TDs to Owens and Lee Evans.
"If they are constantly nitpicking about everything I say in an interview, and they make it into a story, I know I'm playing with a young quarterback," Owens says. "I'm not coming here trying to mess up a quarterback-receiver relationship. Now, he sees and he hears and he reads that stuff. Who knows what he's thinking?"
If Owens is guilty at times of speaking too honestly, he says that comes of growing up with a strict grandmother who impressed on him the importance of always speaking his mind.
Owens has never shown up on a police blotter.
"I don't smoke. I don't do drugs. I don't do none of that. I drink sociably, if I do drink, you know, and I get home safely. … You are never going to see me out there beating up on no girl. No domestic violence, no nothing. No sketchy incidents … that's never going to be me. And I already know if that was me that would be like the end of me. It would be the end. And I know the first thing a lot of people (would say), 'I knew this day was going to come, been waiting on it.' "
Making a difference
Owens spread his arms like a bird after last week's TD catch and bumped chests with his teammates but had no carefully choreographed celebration.
"The league has cracked down," he says. "I've thought of the bells and whistles of celebration, so at this point what more can you do?"
Wide receiver Josh Reed thinks new choreography will come. "I'm waiting to see the T.O. thing he does," Reed says. "I love that."
If teammates like his showmanship, they say they love his work ethic. "Going against him in practice every day," safety Donte Whitner says, "makes our corners better — makes me better."
Owens also is trying to make Buffalo better as the face of a campaign for the local food bank. More than $100,000 was raised the first week. "I know how it feels not to have something," he says, noting his family used food stamps when he was growing up.
Owens is a national spokesman for the Alzheimer's Association — his grandmother has the disease — and was honorary chairman of a walk for the local chapter.
"He has been a very good citizen," Buffalo mayor Byron Brown says. "As mayor I am very pleased with the way he has been engaged civically."
Owens is angry at the news media. But he is mostly off to a rosy start in Buffalo. Fans cheer. Teammates celebrate.
Yet history indicates it might end badly.
Owens says that's the news media's fault. Doesn't he take responsibility for himself?
Other questions Owens answers without hesitation. Here he pauses several seconds.
"I do, from the standpoint of the way I was raised," he says. "I can live with that, because that's what my grandmother taught me: to be honest."
And then, in his next breath: "Do I feel that the media has been honest with all their reports about me?"
Not surprisingly, he does not.
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