Another Day at the Ranch
by Brad Sham
IRVING, Texas - A fellow asked on some radio show from somewhere during training camp if this Terrell Owens stuff, with the not practicing and the bicycle jersey and whatnot, was the biggest circus these eyes had seen in Camp Cowboy.
Hardly, we said, recalling an early camp chat with team PR director Rich Dalrymple, who knows not only where the circus is but where the ringmaster keeps his whistle. We agreed that Owens' arrival may be causing a national fuss, but around this franchise, with everything in its history, this was just another day at the office.
Once you've endured Super Bowls and White Houses and Deions and coaches with guns, Owens is nothing. This is a franchise that before anyone ever heard of Jerry Jones and Jimmy Johnson gave the world Duane Thomas and Thomas Henderson and Rafael Septien and Lance Rentzel and North Dallas Forty.
Owens?
As Jimmy might have said, "Please."
After Wednesday, I am prepared to re-think my answer. This may have been the most off-the-hook day in the history of hooks. And days. We've seen a lot of things happen around here, but not many publicized national suicide watches that were denied within sixteen hours by the reported victim.
None of it would have been possible, of course, were it not for Owens. Yet most of the out of control, bizarre cyclone of news and rumor had almost nothing to do with him.
It has to do with police reports and a media world gone haywire. It has to do with four-hour news cycles and Internets and satellites and blogs. Terrell Owens is a lightning rod because he has made himself that, and we buy in. We fans and we media, we make it possible for him to be him by setting new standards for irresponsible overreaction at every opportunity.
Something ridiculously wrong happened with Terrell Owens Tuesday night. Maybe he was despondent and tried to do himself harm. Solid reporting will give us insight into that in the next couple of days. Maybe he accidentally took too much medication that made him give a wrong answer to a police question. This much we know: Owens could stand before reporters and deny a suicide attempt, as he did Wednesday, and still many choose to not believe him. They say he is hiding something, spinning. Maybe he is. I don't know. And neither do some of the people who say they know.
Wednesday afternoon, Kim Etheredge, Owens' publicist, followed his exchange with reporters with a statement denying saying she had told police Owens was depressed. Now we have the murky world of conflicting reports. Someone is telling less than the truth, and we're going to choose to blame someone with a personal publicist.
You know what? That's fine. Where Terrell Owens is concerned, we slip out of the world of football and into the world of celebrity, and the rules there, it appears, are different from anything the rest of us know about. There are serious issues here, though, that ought not get lost in the shouting.
One is that apparent circumstances do not dictate state of mind. Owens couldn't be suicidal, because he loves himself too much. As Etheridge unfortunately said, "Terrell has 25 million reasons not to harm himself." Hey lady: We're trying to find out your guy's state of mind, and millions of fans want to know how all this impacts their team. This is not the time we want to hear about his money.
But besides that, you ought to know this: You don't have to be broke, unemployed and homeless to be depressed. You don't have to be alone to be lonely and you can hide it from everyone but yourself. Do not judge someone else's state of mind nor reproach them for having demons because you don't think they should, since they have fame and money.
There's another issue that one fears is beyond solving: In the internet-cable-satellite world of Right Now, getting the story first is more important than getting it right. If Owens is to be believed, and we have spoken to health care professionals who say it makes sense, he took some wrong amounts of medication and didn't understand the questions he was answering from police. Those answers led to what should have been a preliminary police report that quoted Owens as saying he intended to harm himself. Once that report got into media hands, it would have been wrong of any media outlet not to have reported that.
But somewhere today there's probably some Dallas police personnel minus a few layers of hide for letting that report get into media hands. Much as the reporter in me wants to admire the news professional who got that report, the citizen in me wants to demand it never happen again, if misinformation was dispensed.
And the news professional is profoundly embarrassed and disappointed at the people who went on the air and on the Internet and dispensed about four or five hours worth of wisdom and speculation about Owens' mental health and the impact on the football team without even knowing what had happened or when or to whom.
Opinions were formed and shared and judgments made without so much as talking to a person involved. We understand about filling time. Our question is, why could it not be filled with people saying, "We ought to wait until the facts are in," instead of talking about how Bill Parcells couldn't possibly keep his team together with this shocking suicide attempt that masked some deep dark secret.
So we're down to this: Did Owens try to harm himself? Who knows? What does the answer matter if we don't believe him? Assume what you wish. Part of the problem is that this man comes with the baggage of disbelief, when maybe we should be practicing clean slates and second chances.
This much is certain: By the time Thursday lunch rolls around, most of the public will only want to know how this impacts the Cowboys chances Sunday in Nashville, Tenn., and for the season. For an answer, let's call on my partner on he Cowboys' radio broadcasts, former Cowboys safety Charlie Waters.
Waters was in the early days of his Cowboys career when the team was preparing for a playoff game. A playoff game, mind you, and came the news that talented but troubled receiver Lance Rentzel, who was married to bombshell singer-actress Joey Heatherton, was arrested the day before the game for indecent exposure.
"Coach (Tom) Landry told us the night before the game that Lance wouldn't be playing the next day and here was why," Waters recalled Wednesday. "We all said, 'He did what?'"
And they went out and won the game.
Say a prayer for Terrell Owens and demand much, much better from the police and the media.
The football team will be fine.
IRVING, Texas - A fellow asked on some radio show from somewhere during training camp if this Terrell Owens stuff, with the not practicing and the bicycle jersey and whatnot, was the biggest circus these eyes had seen in Camp Cowboy.
Hardly, we said, recalling an early camp chat with team PR director Rich Dalrymple, who knows not only where the circus is but where the ringmaster keeps his whistle. We agreed that Owens' arrival may be causing a national fuss, but around this franchise, with everything in its history, this was just another day at the office.
Once you've endured Super Bowls and White Houses and Deions and coaches with guns, Owens is nothing. This is a franchise that before anyone ever heard of Jerry Jones and Jimmy Johnson gave the world Duane Thomas and Thomas Henderson and Rafael Septien and Lance Rentzel and North Dallas Forty.
Owens?
As Jimmy might have said, "Please."
After Wednesday, I am prepared to re-think my answer. This may have been the most off-the-hook day in the history of hooks. And days. We've seen a lot of things happen around here, but not many publicized national suicide watches that were denied within sixteen hours by the reported victim.
None of it would have been possible, of course, were it not for Owens. Yet most of the out of control, bizarre cyclone of news and rumor had almost nothing to do with him.
It has to do with police reports and a media world gone haywire. It has to do with four-hour news cycles and Internets and satellites and blogs. Terrell Owens is a lightning rod because he has made himself that, and we buy in. We fans and we media, we make it possible for him to be him by setting new standards for irresponsible overreaction at every opportunity.
Something ridiculously wrong happened with Terrell Owens Tuesday night. Maybe he was despondent and tried to do himself harm. Solid reporting will give us insight into that in the next couple of days. Maybe he accidentally took too much medication that made him give a wrong answer to a police question. This much we know: Owens could stand before reporters and deny a suicide attempt, as he did Wednesday, and still many choose to not believe him. They say he is hiding something, spinning. Maybe he is. I don't know. And neither do some of the people who say they know.
Wednesday afternoon, Kim Etheredge, Owens' publicist, followed his exchange with reporters with a statement denying saying she had told police Owens was depressed. Now we have the murky world of conflicting reports. Someone is telling less than the truth, and we're going to choose to blame someone with a personal publicist.
You know what? That's fine. Where Terrell Owens is concerned, we slip out of the world of football and into the world of celebrity, and the rules there, it appears, are different from anything the rest of us know about. There are serious issues here, though, that ought not get lost in the shouting.
One is that apparent circumstances do not dictate state of mind. Owens couldn't be suicidal, because he loves himself too much. As Etheridge unfortunately said, "Terrell has 25 million reasons not to harm himself." Hey lady: We're trying to find out your guy's state of mind, and millions of fans want to know how all this impacts their team. This is not the time we want to hear about his money.
But besides that, you ought to know this: You don't have to be broke, unemployed and homeless to be depressed. You don't have to be alone to be lonely and you can hide it from everyone but yourself. Do not judge someone else's state of mind nor reproach them for having demons because you don't think they should, since they have fame and money.
There's another issue that one fears is beyond solving: In the internet-cable-satellite world of Right Now, getting the story first is more important than getting it right. If Owens is to be believed, and we have spoken to health care professionals who say it makes sense, he took some wrong amounts of medication and didn't understand the questions he was answering from police. Those answers led to what should have been a preliminary police report that quoted Owens as saying he intended to harm himself. Once that report got into media hands, it would have been wrong of any media outlet not to have reported that.
But somewhere today there's probably some Dallas police personnel minus a few layers of hide for letting that report get into media hands. Much as the reporter in me wants to admire the news professional who got that report, the citizen in me wants to demand it never happen again, if misinformation was dispensed.
And the news professional is profoundly embarrassed and disappointed at the people who went on the air and on the Internet and dispensed about four or five hours worth of wisdom and speculation about Owens' mental health and the impact on the football team without even knowing what had happened or when or to whom.
Opinions were formed and shared and judgments made without so much as talking to a person involved. We understand about filling time. Our question is, why could it not be filled with people saying, "We ought to wait until the facts are in," instead of talking about how Bill Parcells couldn't possibly keep his team together with this shocking suicide attempt that masked some deep dark secret.
So we're down to this: Did Owens try to harm himself? Who knows? What does the answer matter if we don't believe him? Assume what you wish. Part of the problem is that this man comes with the baggage of disbelief, when maybe we should be practicing clean slates and second chances.
This much is certain: By the time Thursday lunch rolls around, most of the public will only want to know how this impacts the Cowboys chances Sunday in Nashville, Tenn., and for the season. For an answer, let's call on my partner on he Cowboys' radio broadcasts, former Cowboys safety Charlie Waters.
Waters was in the early days of his Cowboys career when the team was preparing for a playoff game. A playoff game, mind you, and came the news that talented but troubled receiver Lance Rentzel, who was married to bombshell singer-actress Joey Heatherton, was arrested the day before the game for indecent exposure.
"Coach (Tom) Landry told us the night before the game that Lance wouldn't be playing the next day and here was why," Waters recalled Wednesday. "We all said, 'He did what?'"
And they went out and won the game.
Say a prayer for Terrell Owens and demand much, much better from the police and the media.
The football team will be fine.
posted by The Gryphon at 9:24 AM
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