Route tough to cover
Many catches to this Owens story
The Truth? Oh, yeah, good luck trying to find that out.
We will never find out exactly what happened to or with Terrell Owens on the night of Tuesday, Sept. 26, 2006. Could a police report somehow be wrong or inaccurate or even doctored? Afraid so. Would a publicist lie? Without question. An efficient publicist is a trained and practiced distorter of the truth. Would Terrell Owens himself lie? Sure. In an embarrassing situation, who wouldn't?
Is it, ultimately, any of our business?
That's a question no one has asked because the answer is self-evident. Terrell Owens has positioned himself as far more than just another football player, or even just another great football player. He has worked hard to become that juiciest of all American commodities -- a
Celebrities move in their own orbit. You wait. The Reverends Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton will be heard on L'Affaire Owens before it's all over. I'm sure Larry King's producer has already called. And you know Oprah will always have room on her set for T.O. whenever he wishes to dish. It doesn't matter whether she knows a blitz from a blintz; T.O. is a Celebrity, and nothing else matters.
Among prominent NFL players, T.O., and only T.O., could have created the circus atmosphere that prevailed from Tuesday night through Wednesday afternoon. If something happened to Marvin Harrison, for example, there would be no publicist grilled by the press. If something happened to Torry Holt, for another example, we would not see Deion Sanders walking out the front door of the Holt residence to address the assembled media on the front lawn. Marvin Harrison and Torry Holt may be every bit the wide receiver that Terrell Owens is, but neither is a Celebrity.
Terrell Owens, now there is a Celebrity.
So, yes, we want to know what exactly is up with Terrell Owens. Is it even remotely possible that the smiling, cocky guy we saw stomp on the Cowboys logo, wield the Sharpie after a touchdown, do sit-ups on his front lawn for the benefit of the TV cameras, and ride the exercise bike at training camp in the Tour de France outfit -- attention-grabbing moves all -- could really have such severe life issues that he would actually try to kill himself? It doesn't seem plausible to us. Isn't it obvious that T.O. loves T.O. too much to do T.O. harm?
That, of course, would presuppose that we really know this man, and, of course, we do not.
A situation such as this reminds us for the umpteenth time that we really don't know any of our famous athletes. What we most often know are cartoon figures they have created. These people can be amazingly contradictory. Public Bad Guys are sometimes capable of wonderful acts of private charity. Public Good Guys can have frightening dark sides away from the cameras and notebooks (think Kirby Puckett).
Or people may be working hard to hide the truth of their private misery by adopting a veneer of bravado and confidence in public. There is some evidence to suggest this is exactly what Terrell Owens has been doing all along.
According to a Dallas Morning News story, Owens was very upset Tuesday because he has a 7-year-old son living in California, whose Monday birthday celebration Owens could not attend, nor could the boy visit him. Concurrent with that, a supposed fiancee had just broken up with him. Who knew?
It's never been any secret that Owens had a miserable, traumatic childhood featuring rocky relationships with both an extremely controlling mother and an alcoholic grandmother. As a kicker, he discovered when he was 12 that he had befriended a girl living across the street who was actually his half-sister. Nice way to discover your father, huh?
Meanwhile, it is hardly surprising that the San Francisco Chronicle informs us that the 49ers, in the person of Bill Walsh, had strongly urged their rambunctious wide receiver to seek professional help as far back as 2000.
``I know, I was right in the middle of it because I was running the operation," Walsh was quoted as saying. ``I did try to get him outside counseling, but he refused. And there is no way you can obligate anyone to seek treatment."
Do we know for sure that any of this has anything to do with anything? No, we do not. Many professional athletes come from horrific backgrounds, and many of them turn out just fine. Many professional athletes live rather tempestuous lives away from the field, court, or rink, but they are able to focus on their jobs to the point where they are regarded as points of positive reference (think Lawrence Taylor). It's all about individuals, and individual reactions to the forces in their lives.
Now if an individual sport athlete is self-destructive in some way, it's a matter of concern only to himself, and his immediate family, if any (think John Daly). But when the individual in question is a team sport athlete, there are far-reaching ramifications.
Coaches and teammates hate ``distractions," and Terrell Owens has been a major distraction for each of his three professional teams. He created a problem for the 49ers from the fallout emanating from his midfield dissing of the vaunted Cowboys logo and with his criticism of quarterback Jeff Garcia. He created a problem for the Eagles with his criticism of quarterback Donovan McNabb and a holdout played out in public, replete with innumerable appearances on ESPN with his reptilian agent, Drew Rosenhaus. He had created more news by not playing than all the other Cowboys had made by playing, and now he is involved in an incident that is, in the best-case scenario, bizarre, and in the worst-case scenario, tragic, if indeed he really did intend to do himself harm.
He is a news magnet, and if there is one thing Bill Parcells does not need is a player who is more noted for what happens away from the field, as opposed to what he does in uniform. This will not be a long-term relationship.
Whatever did happen Tuesday night, T.O. is back in all his look-at-me exuberant glory and it is quite likely he will be on the field Sunday against the Titans. He might even catch a touchdown pass.
But before too long, something else will happen, and T.O. will be back in the news. Forget Sports Illustrated or ESPN The Magazine. Those are for mere football players. T.O. will always have a home in People. That's where we read up on Celebrities.
It's all good fun, as long as we don't kid ourselves into thinking we'll ever know who he really is. Hey, he may not know himself.
Bob Ryan is a Globe columnist. His e-mail address is ryan@globe.com. 
