I have been doing some form of sports media on and off since I was a freshman at Ohio State and I don’t think there is anyone I have written about complex as Terrell Owens.
Whereas players like Kobe and Lebron always spark discussion they are pretty easy to figure out.
I don’t even think T.O. knows truly who he is at times.
On the one hand you want to feel bad for him, but then you realize a lot of these wounds are self inflicted. The 3rd article I ever wrote on BSO was an open letter to T.O.
I saw the path he was on and I was afraid it could lead to this, maybe not this extreme but a very bad ending. T.O. laid it all out there in to GQ.
Terrell Owens, the former NFL star receiver who has signed to play for and co-own an indoor football team, is friendless and nearly broke, he told GQ magazine. “I’m in hell,” Owens, 38, said he tells people who ask about his well-being. After the Cincinnati Bengals did not renew his one-year, $2 million contract last year, Owens has been suffering from his financial shortcomings, including ventures gone bad and child support for his four children, he said.
The $80 million or so he had made in his career is almost gone, he said, but not because he lived a lavish lifestyle. In a profile story in GQ’s February issue, Owens said his financial advisers lured him into risky investments such as an Alabama entertainment complex that cost him $2 million. He later learned the venture was illegal in the state and violated the NFL’s policy of prohibiting players from investing in gambling, he said.
He also owns a slew of properties that he thought he would be able to rent before the housing market tanked, he said. He has a home in Los Angeles that cost him $499,000 and a multimillion-dollar home that is for sale in Atlanta. The home in New Jersey for which he paid $3.9 million was sold in late 2010 for $1.7 million, he said. Owens also pays $44,600 a month in child support for his four children, ages 5 to 12. Three of the four mothers have sued him.
The football player laments about losing trust in people and friends. When people text and ask where he is, he answers, “I’m in hell. I don’t have no friends,” he told GQ. ”I don’t want no friends. That’s how I feel.”
Life is all about maneuvering properly through the forks in the road and depending on which direction you go, it could really change your entire life.
I always wondered what would have happened if the Eagles won that Super Bowl against the Patriots (in my mind they were the better team) and T.O. would have been named the MVP (he played an amazing game with broken ankle).
Alas, a combination of turnovers, bad clock management and a disputed choke job by Donovan McNabb led to a loss. It sort of went downhill from that point on.
T.O. signed a contract with the Allen Wranglers of the IFL, it is his last shot to show NFL teams he can play. If not the ending of his book will not be a happy one.