I never watch TV soap operas. In part that's because most of them, to put it bluntly, are implausible crap. However, the other part of the reason is that real life is far more entertaining than any soap opera.
I humbly submit my principal piece of evidence for your perusal.
Terrell Owens.
When T.O. (as he is now unversally known) first began whining about everybody who did not kiss his ass while he was with the 49'ers, it looked like yet another prima donna wide receiver hissy-fit. Nothing new there. Ever since the year dot, wide recievers have intermittently thrown hissy-fits and behaved like prima donnas. The brilliant skewering of the prima donna NFL player, via the "Leon" commercials, could only have been about wide receivers. Leon is a composite of Randy Moss and T.O. He is preening, narcissistic and utterly selfish. ("There's no "I" in team", says the journalist. "There's no "We" either" retorts Leon).
However, T.O. has taken this to a new height by having a seemingly perpetual hissy-fit. In T.O's world, he is perpetually disrespected, unappreciated and unfairly treated. Having gotten himself run out of San Francisco by feuding with his coach, his quarterback and just about every management figure in that franchise, T.O. balked at being traded to the Baltimore Ravens, possibly because he would have had to answer to Ray Lewis on that team. We can be sure that Ray Lewis would have rocketed T.O. into low earth orbit the first time he attempted to put himself above the team. No, T.O. wanted to be Loved. He therefore decided that he would play for the Philadelphia Eagles, a team that seemingly needed him desperately. The Eagles, so the story went, were only one good wide receiver short of a Super Bowl win.
So T.O. signed for the Eagles amidst mutual exclamations of undying love and respect. And for a while, it seemed to work. It even led to T.O. defying doctors orders to return in the Super Bowl, where, despite being not at full speed, he still finished with the best receiving yardage of any Eagles player. That was one of the bravest NFL performances of the modern era, with T.O. gutting it out to play a significant part in the game.
However, that was the high point in the relationship. During the off-season, T.O. suddenly decided that His Contract Was Unfair. To prove how serious he was, he fired his agent David Joseph, and hired Drew Rosenhaus. This is the agent that has been acting as a players' Rottweiler for several years now. It is safe to say that Drew Rosenhaus is not exactly most NFL franchises' favorite person these days. He is very good at extracting more money from clubs for his players.
Rosenhaus and T.O. set to work to make the Eagles cough up more money. We were treated to heart-rending tales of fiscal unfairness through the Summer. Nothing new there. The fact that they were attempting to hold a gun to the head of a team that has a well-known antipathy to forced contract re-negotiations did not seem to faze either T.O. or Rosenhaus. The fact that they had no leverage also did not seem to make a difference. T.O. was different, T.O. was the saviour of the Eagles, and T.O. was going to get what T.O. wanted. This led to the usual player hold-out. It also led to the inevitable climbdown by T.O. when the Eagles refused to submit to this not-very-subtle public blackmail.
Ultimately, players who hold out don't have much leverage. The recent order by the NFL arbitrator to Keenan McArdell to pay back $1.8m to the Buccaneers after his 2004 holdout sent a messsage that holdouts will be seen as a breach of contract leading to fiscal remedies. T.O. had talked himself into a dead end. He had no choice but to submit to reality, and so he reported to training camp, surly and barely co-operative. However, by that time he had a bigger hole to dig himself out of.
T.O., when he decides that he is not getting his way on some issue, seems to adhere to the policy that the way to make yourself look good is to try to make those around you look bad. Hence the sudden declaration by T.O. during the Summer that they could have won the Super Bowl if only Donovan McNabb hadn't gotten tired in the fourth quarter. As a mechanism for building a working relationship with team-mates, that was a stroke of genius. You bolster your case for more money by rubbishing the franchise quarterback, one of the people who originally helped to get you to the team? What a fricking genius move that was.
The net result was that the relationship between T.O. and the Eagles has steadily unravelled since earlier this year, to the point where the Eagles have quite clearly decided to cut their losses. They will suspend him for the maximum 4 games allowed under the CBA, then de-activate him. Then they will cut him as soon as fiscally practicable.
The newest public apology outside his house by T.O. the other day is nothing more than a public relations ploy to try and gain some sympathy, and also bolster his arbitration case, since he has filed a greivance against the Eagles. The presence of the stern-faced Rosenhaus next to T.O. as he read his latest prepared mea culpa suggests that Rosenhaus was in charge of that little event, as he realizes that T.O.'s policy of dynamiting bridges instead of burning them makes his chances of winning an arbitration hearing somewhere between slim and none, unless he shows some humility real quick. As a credible exercise in humility, it wouldn't even win a high-school drama competition.
There will be some franchise somewhere that will take a chance on T.O. The Dallas Cowboys signed Keyshawn Johnson after the Tampa Bay Buccaneers ran him out of town. There is, however, a big difference between Keyshawn and T.O. Keyshawn, by signing with Dallas, went back to working under a coach (Bill Parcells) who got the best out of him when he played for the New York Jets. Pain in the ass though Keyshawn may be, when Parcells faces him down, Keyshawn listens. After his blow-up at Drew Bledsoe earlier in the season, you could see Keyshawn trying to make his case to Parcells, who can be seen clearly telling him to "shut up and go catch the damn ball", or words to that effect.
T.O. by contrast has no coach in the NFL right now who would vouch for him, or want to sign him based on a successful past working relationship. Both Steve Mariucci and Andy Reid would probably be tossing coins for the privilege of running T.O. down were he to ever find himself stranded in the middle of the highway. However, I am sure that some GM or director of player personnel will manage to rationalize a set of voices in his head and will prevail upon his club's ownership to sign T.O.
I wish that franchise luck. They'll need it.
T.O. is the ultimate narcissist. Everything I have seen about him suggests that he cannot be converted into even a marginally-adjusted team member. At the age of 31, he is at the peak of his powers, but his presence on a team extracts a terrible price on all those forced to deal with him on a daily basis. Most franchises will conclude that the price is not worth it. One will pay that price.