The aftermath

by Dave Halprin on Sep 27, 2006 11:19 PM CDT in Dallas Cowboys News

I'm going to cap off one of the more bizarre days in Cowboys history with a few of my own conclusions - note they are my conclusions and not being stated as fact.

Owens didn't attempt to take his own life. He took some pain pills - probably too many - and things got out of hand. In reality, what we have is a case of a guy going to the hospital for a bad reaction to pills. If the police report had said nothing about "suicide" this whole incident would've been over in no time.
Just because a police report says "suicide attempt" doesn't make it true. The police acted in good faith, because the preliminary circumstances easily could've been construed as a suicide attempt. But later revelations like no stomach pumping, the 35 pills were not ingested, and the hospital letting Owens go in the morning all add up to something besides suicide. So does coming out to practice pass patterns the next day.
Kim Etheridge was genuinely in fear that Owens was possibly overdosing, and probably said some things that she now regrets, but at the time were not inappropriate. She should've been worried last night and she did the right thing in calling 911 because you can never know what is happening for sure. She should've just come clean today.
I don't hold the media responsible for the initial report. When someone as famous as Owens goes into the hospital and you get a police report that says they think it might've been a suicide attempt, you pretty much got to run that story. Where I do hold the media responsible is for the endless parade of people who know nothing about the incident first-hand or don't know Owens personally speculating on his mental health. Some of it was shameful.
The attempt by the media to call this another distraction is also beyond the pale. The guy took pain killers, he had a bad reaction, and he was taken to the hospital. I don't care about his past baggage, the guy got sick. The day you are holding Owens to the standard that he's not allowed to get sick or it's a distraction to the team is the day you've crossed over into the T.O. Zone.
Bill Parcells had a pretty good idea of what was going on when he entered his press conference. He just wasn't interested in feeding the beast, and he knew that Owens was O.K. He had no interest in anything else.
Where the heck is Jerry Jones? I would've guessed he would be the guy out front talking about this from the Cowboys organization.
Yes, the Cowboys are paying the price for bringing the circus to town. No matter who's at fault here - or nobody being at fault here - because the Cowboys chose to sign Owens they must deal with all that brings with it. And sometimes that brings unwanted or unwarranted media attention.
Thank goodness we have a game this week, if this would've happened last week, there would've been no game on Sunday to start thinking about.

There are lots of articles being written about this incident, lots of people speculating and analyzing, or bringing up details on the periphery. I'm not going to link to them all, because it would take too much of my time. If I run across something interesting on the story, I'll post it. Otherwise, I'm going to try and return to some normalcy on the blog and tomorrow I promise a preview of the Titans based on some film review I've done.

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another great piece of analysis...

by Grizz....yeah man...some people suggesting T.O. needs professional help or that he's mental unstable is shameful...but hey, it works...ask skip bayless...hey spent years blabbing about athletes, making up stories, jumping to conclusions and look where it got him...on ESPN, with a book deal, a syndicated column and a radio show....

i saw michael clarke duncan (Green Mile) on Cold Pizza and it looked like he was going to beat him up.... i had my fingers crossed...

but it seems like this story isn't going to die anytime soon....dallasnews.com just ran a one-source story (a highly unusual tactic that can lack credibility) about T.O.'s trainer, who basically said T.O.'s fiancee broke up with him and he missed his son's birthday on the same day....this was the same day he took the supplement/pain medication cocktail....

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/092806dnspoowenstrainer.2e6991d.ht ml

I will say this. I don't agree with everybody on this blog, but for the most part, everybody has been pretty respect about T.O. and the possibility of a suicide. Not liking a man is one thing, wishing he were dead is quite another.

by Tuna Helper on Sep 27, 2006 11:27 PM CDT reply actions

another great piece of analysis

I think the trainer's interview actually supports what TO said to the media, for example that he was taking massive doses of supplements. And the emotional stress explains why the publicist immedaitely jumped to the conclusion that he was suicidal.

I heard Mort this morning on ESPN droning on about "it's always something with Owens". It's always something with Owens because he gets more attention than Paris Hilton. If the media didn't cover every sneeze, I'm pretty sure he'd be way less of a distraction than say, Chris Henry...

by dunkman on Sep 28, 2006 7:30 AM CDT up reply actions

Why the story will continue

The Morning News rewrote this new trainer story in the last hour. They took the part where the trainer says it was NOT a suicide but he saw how Etheridge might have thought so in light of the other circumstances and pushed that aspect down near the bottom of the article. They phrased their "lead" to make it sound as if suicide were a logical conclusion.

The Belo Corporation and their outlets, Channel 8, the Dallas Morning News, Matt Mosely and friends, are nothing more than irresponsible liars with large-scale media powers. Like Dale Hanson, they always look for angles to attack the organization. Mosely admitted on his blog that "Bristol" (ESPN) was watching him and the fawning tone of his post was clear.

Now DMN is attempting to bolster the Channel 8 report with a single-source story, as Tuna Helper mentioned. They have lots of egg on their face nationally. They've lost tremendous credibility. The national media is extremely annoyed at having been misled and the worst fear of Mosely and his pals, that "Bristol" and the east coast media see them as hicks in some flyover outpost are coming true.

Count on several more days of their desperate try to keep this story alive. There's no limit to what they'll say because they have no scruples and no sense of obligation to report the truth.

by AmosM on Sep 28, 2006 12:02 AM CDT reply actions

BTB

Grizz, I REALLY appreciate your blog more than ever. It is intelligent and thorough. Plus, it provides a forum for thoughtful discussion and is the voice of reason in an otherwise deplorabale MSM media circus. A million thanks!

by CaliforniaT on Sep 28, 2006 12:04 AM CDT reply actions

If anyone had doubts about TO

playing at TEN this Sunday, this debacle can put those to rest. He will definately be starting if for no other reason than to stick it to the media.
Kim Etheridge is possibly the WORST publicist ever and needs to be fired yesterday. You can't overstate the media's responsibility for blowing this way way beyond what was appropriate and then having the stones to not back off when it was clear to anyone with common sense that it was not a suicide attempt.
The bloodlust for tearing this guy down is undeniable. And for the record, I was the biggest TO hater of anyone you'd ever meet. But now I actually feel bad for the guy and will be cheering for him to have a monster game not only this weekend, but for the rest of the season.

by APerfectStar on Sep 28, 2006 3:45 AM CDT reply actions

Not all of the media are idiots

I have laid off this story since early yesterday morning because there was too much smoke to see truth. Grizz, as usual you have said it very well. I get Miami Herald on-line and today's story by Dan Le Batard is excellent to call out the media:

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/sports/football/nfl/miami_dolphins/15625545.htm

Read the whole thing if you can. I am not sure if the link requires registration so I will copy a couple of paragraphs here:

" We feed his ego, and his ego feeds us. Our appetites are equally insatiable. The dysfunctional marriage between Terrell Owens and the media is a fuse always waiting to be lit. Doesn't take much for a mere spark to hiss toward an inevitable explosion of debate, noise, shouting, programming, ratings. All it took Wednesday were a few pills. That, and the resultant confusion, media-mushroom-clouded into a seismic blast felt throughout a vibrating Sports America."

" The holy trinity of celebrity, scandal and sports merged Wednesday to make one heck of a perfect mess. Initial reports were that T.O. tried to kill himself. He says he just had an allergic reaction to some pain medication. Pretty big gulf between those two things. But it doesn't take much to get the fire raging when the subject is T.O. We, The Media, are waiting expectantly for him to do something, anything, please, to light the fuse again and call him punk-clown-jerk names. Delirious comments uttered under the influence of medicines? That'll do."

" This will get me called an apologist. But I'm not apologizing. I'm not condoning. I'm merely not condemning. I'm not excusing. I'm explaining. I don't know T.O. well enough to like him or not like him. I just don't hate him. I don't view him as a symbol for all that is wrong with today's sports as much as I do a cartoon character exaggerating everything that is about today's sports. I try not to get indignant about the behavior of athlete/entertainers at the arena in much the same way I try not to get outraged by clowns at the circus.

But I do marvel at the incessant storm that swirls around him, one either created by him and fed by us or created by us and fed by him. Either way, what seemed like a simple accident/allergy morphed Wednesday into a frenzy of spinning national headlines like the ones you used to see in the black-and-white movies. It doesn't appear he did anything wrong this time. Can the rest of us say the same?"

by lee3022 on Sep 28, 2006 4:37 AM CDT reply actions

Mark Schlereth's Comments!

I think one thing that many people are overlooking is that this ordeal will actually help our team come together. If TO would have actually done something wrong then things would certainly be different, but I have been in sports all my life and when one of your teammates, no matter what their past, becomes an innocent victum of any kind of attack, the team will rally around them and it will help them play better as a team. Those that were hoping or still believing that this would be something negative for the TEAM, have created a circumstance that actually helps move our team forward. Mark Schlereth (former Redskin) spoke directly to this topic yesterday without all the hater TO bias or even any rivalry bias. Just a little shout-out to all the HATERS. TO just became a lot closer teammate to the entire TEAM and helped push the development of our TEAM chemistry a lot further along. We are playoff bound, with the help of the victumized TO.

STAY TUNED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hopefully the media will continue to try to make something out of nothing. It will only make us stronger.

by dboysrback on Sep 28, 2006 7:12 AM CDT reply actions

Kim

She was possibly the worst part of this whole incident. Her comment of T.O. having 25 Million reasons to live was flat out insulting. That women showed exactly what he means to her. He is a paycheck.

by joshq on Sep 28, 2006 8:21 AM CDT reply actions

Jerry Jones

I believe Jerry Jones was seeing his son get married in Italy last weekend. Maybe he's not back yet. Of course if I was on the Italian Riviera I wouldn't want to come back just for this mess.

More details here under the heading "Lemon Into Lemonade."

Derek

Signature! I don't need no stinking signature!!

by DerekSTheRed on Sep 28, 2006 8:22 AM CDT reply actions

Bradie James said it the best

T.O. loves himself way too much to ever attempt suicide and I agree with that. T.O. is a lot of things, but I seriously doubt he's depressed enough to end his life. Just ridiculous speculation by the media.

"They're going to leave me over here by myself and thats when I'm gonna sink my fangs into them." - Terry Glenn

by Terry on Sep 28, 2006 8:30 AM CDT reply actions

Logic Did Not Play A Part!

What amazes me the most, is that not a single media report evaluated all the information that was available to them before drawing their own conclusions. If they would have looked at the facts, it was EASY to see that much of the story didn't add up. At that point they should have at least discussed the possibilities of what might have happened. Instead of trying to be the first to report what most likely happened based on reasonable logic. They all reported the worst possible details as if they were fact.

It became obvious to me very soon after the first report, that it just didn't make good sense at all. Other posters came to similar logically conclusions early as well. The fact that many of our players dismissed it right away because they new better, is very telling of how most intelligent individuals don't believe any of the media hype, and wait for all the facts to come out before jumping to conclusions. This wasn't a distraction for our team or our players at all, when it comes to interferring with practicing and preparing for our next opponent. They had a good practice yesterday and none of the players were effected by it. It will be business as usual again today at practice, and this will help us come together as a team.

by dboysrback on Sep 28, 2006 8:59 AM CDT reply actions