Saturday, December 17, 2005

In the latest issue of GQ, Terrell Owens wonders if the media's out to get him:

The things that I’ve done in the past, like celebrate in the end zone—they’re making a fanfare out of it now with [Bengals wide receiver] Chad Johnson, with all the celebrations that he’s done, they’re like congratulating him for it. But if it was me? They’d be like, "Oh, we don’t need this in football, this is not good for football." Not that Chad is doing something wrong—it’s not his fault—but you kind of wonder, Do they have it out for me?
To an extent, he's got a point. Some of his celebrations have been great: the Sharpie was genius, and the Ray Lewis dance was clever. But there are two very important differences between T.O. from Chad Johnson. The first is that Chad Johnson seems to be a pretty nice guy, whereas T.O. is kind of a dick. The second is that Chad Johnson's celebrations are invariably meant to amuse (the snow-covered sign ["Dear NFL: Please don't fine me again. Merry Christmas."] is still the best touchdown celebration I've ever seen), whereas Owens's celebrations often seemed designed to belittle. Do people have a different standard for T.O. than they have to Chad Johnson? Absolutely. But he brought it on himself. If he wasn't such a jerk all the time, people wouldn't be so quick to criticize.

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