Friday, December 22, 2006

It seems Owens has spit away his last support

by Senior writer Paul Attner
The Sporting News
December 22, 2006


It has been fascinating to follow the reaction to Terrell Owens' spitting incident. The most emotional and critical reaction has not come from what I would call the mainstream media. Instead, the strongest fallout has centered on ex-NFL players now serving as television analysts.

They have been outraged. It is hard to conceive of any other act on the field that would elicit this kind of anger.

Spitting in someone's face is, in the eyes of these ex-jocks, a massive assault on a player's manhood. There is no forgiveness, no explanation, no defense for this action.

Their attacks on Owens follow along the lines of how Brian Dawkins, the Eagles safety (and obviously not an ex-jock) explained his criticism of Owens on Sporting News radio:

"Not only just in public, in sports period, you just take yourself away from sports. Just take yourself to the neighborhood and have one of your friends, or somebody you don't like, spit in your face, and just see how that makes you feel. Just think about that and visualize that -- someone actually spitting in your face. To me, that's the ultimate insult. That's worse than someone kicking you in the shin or kicking you in the other region. That's the ultimate disrespect to a person."

Owens simply is stupid. He does stupid things, he does them repeatedly, he demonstrates no sincere remorse, he carries on as if he is not responsible for anything he does. It is an amazingly immature attitude and it seems to worsen with each episode. He seemed to have some support among his peers. But now, for sure, he has spit that away.