The rise and fall of T.O.

Terrell Owens enjoyed mythical status in America's toughest sports town. His fall from grace traumatized Philly sports fans -- and poisoned race relations.

By Camille Paglia

Dec 14, 2005 | Philadelphia Eagles fans have been living in a jock soap opera -- "All My Children" surreally crossed with "Die! Die! My Darling!" Star wide receiver Terrell Owens arrived in a cloud of tainted glory from the San Francisco 49ers last year and took this city to delirious heights as the Eagles marched to the Super Bowl, their first appearance there in 24 years. Streaking downfield into the end zone in game after game, Owens (called "T.O.") danced, cavorted and mugged to the ecstatic delight of a Philadelphia crowd that had been starved for trash and flash in the drearily corporate era of nerdy Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie.

Owens was virtually canonized early this year when he made a lightning-quick recovery from a broken lower leg to play against medical advice in the Super Bowl, where the Eagles lost 24-21 to the New England Patriots. Everything's been downhill since then. Genial, charismatic Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb, who longed for an ace receiver and had lobbied for Owens' hiring, suddenly found himself on the latter's hit list. McNabb became mysteriously winded and nearly vomited in the fourth quarter of the Super Bowl. Owens, perhaps piqued by McNabb assuring reporters before the Super Bowl that the Eagles didn't need the injured receiver to win, began to twit the quarterback as an out-of-condition choker.

Whatever chemistry holds a team together began to evaporate. Owens complained that, in risking permanent injury by returning prematurely to the Super Bowl and giving his all, he had "outperformed" his contract and deserved a raise. Public sentiment was with Owens at the start: As I wrote in a celebratory Super Bowl cover story on him for Philadelphia magazine, Owens had by his own grit and tenacity elevated himself to the pantheon of mythical Philadelphia sports heroes like Sylvester Stallone's Rocky Balboa. Owens had zapped the city with pure electricity, a spiritual gift.

Worried about setting a precedent, Eagles management refused to budge on Owens' contract demands and gracelessly hunkered down in siege mentality. There were no generous gestures, no ceremonial signs of respect and appreciation. When McNabb was asked about Owens' appeal, he claimed neutrality as the quarterback -- and then made the foolish gaffe of supporting running back Brian Westbrook's contract claims.

Owens now took the low road and embarked on a series of stupidities that would lead to the near-total destruction of his reputation in Philadelphia. He boycotted the compulsory post-draft mini-camp, hired a new agent -- that colossal, braying jackass, Drew Rosenhaus -- and began sniping at the Eagles publicly. The equally aggrieved Westbrook, in contrast, kept his contract negotiations discreetly private.

At a time when the Eagles needed to regroup and regain confidence after their Super Bowl loss, Owens was a boorish voice of rancorous divisiveness. Questions flew about whether he'd turn up in August for preseason training camp at Lehigh University in the Pocono Mountains north of Philadelphia.

By chance, I was driving down from family business in upstate New York on Aug. 10 and stopped by at Lehigh to watch the Eagles work out. The air was buzzing with tension. I eavesdropped on two guards with walkie-talkies exchanging whispers about T.O. -- he's not talking to anyone; he marched into the lunch room and pulled out his one pal; he's left camp.

As I got back on the road to Philly (after complimenting kicker David Akers on his hard-hitting open-field tackles and buying a souvenir Eagles zippered long-neck beer bottle sleeve), I was astonished to hear radio bulletins with just-breaking news: Head coach Andy Reid had expelled Owens from training camp and suspended him for a week; the receiver had cleaned out his dorm room and was en route in his truck back to his home in Moorestown, N.J.

Now began a bizarre media extravaganza. News helicopters (reminiscent of O.J. Simpson's white Bronco chase) took to the air to capture Owens' retreat to his McMansion on a painfully barren scrub lawn in a generic cul-de-sac. Crowds gathered to gape at the Napoleonic exile on his suburban Elba. This proved too seductive to the attention-craving Owens, who hauled a weight bench out to his driveway, stripped to the waist to show off his phenomenally sculpted torso, and laughingly did abdominal crunches for the cameras, as the choppers whirred overhead.

Philadelphia sports radio is always in high gear -- I listen around the clock to WIP, with its flamboyant hosts and tough sports chicks -- but the Owens saga (or "freak show," as it was soon called) turned the airwaves into World War III. Should Owens stay or go? Callers for and against T.O. debated the Eagles crisis at high pitch. Emotionalism, ambiguity, melodrama: It was like a glossy Hollywood B-picture starring Lana Turner or Susan Hayward. T.O. had refused to talk to the quarterback or to his own offensive coodinator; he and Reid had told each other to "shut up" in the locker room. Macho pro football had turned into high-school sorority cattiness with snubs, backbiting and hurt feelings.

By grandstanding in what some termed a vulgar "minstrel show" in his driveway, Owens forfeited his dignity and prestige virtually overnight. It was agonizingly traumatic for Philadelphia sports fans -- the spectacle of a great champion hemorrhaging from self-inflicted wounds. A week later, when Owens rejoined the team at the Eagles' official practice facility in Philadelphia, his alienation from his fan base was already severe: An airplane hired by a radio station tauntingly flew over the players on the field with a trailing banner proclaiming, "T.O. MUST GO."

Next Page: Angry callers denounced McNabb as a "house Negro"

• 
• Read all letters on this article (49)
• Read Editor's Choice letters on this article (3)
• View blog reactions