Who's the real monster?

Bandwagon forgets they created Owens

April 20, 2004 (NHS) -- It's no surprise you find something vaguely familiar about the whole Terrell Owens soap opera. Its roots are found in classic literature: Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. In that tale, Frankenstein creates his own monster then finds it revolting. The monster pouts and is driven to rage when scorned, killing off those near and dear to his creator. Finally, they end up in exile trying to kill each other in a tragic end.

The creator? The 49er Bandwagon -- a.k.a. the team, its dot-fans, the media and the NFL -- that fashioned the hype and image of Owens into what he is today.

The monster? Duh.

And unfortunately, while Owens and the 49ers did try to kill each other and alienated many pieces of the Bandwagon against each other at the end, the real victims are us legitimate fans sick of the 49ers, Owens, and the spin and hype that has to surround everything they do.

Remember, Owens is not an abomination that appeared by some instantaneous perversion of evolution overnight. The kludge of fragmented, self-deluded, narcissistic personalities that Owens refers to in the third person as "T.O." was slowly and deliberately pieced together by none other than the 49er Bandwagon.

The raw material came from the 49ers, who dubbed him "the next Jerry" the moment he was drafted, then proceeded to throw him a lot of 2-yard dink passes against their NFC Worst schedule to pad his stats -- which, indeed, made him exactly into Jerry (not that hard, was it?). The 49er fans fanned the hype with their usual, ridiculous lack of football understanding. But it is the media that has never understood the true meaning of statistics, systems or talent -- and has continued to shove "All Things Niner Are Best Ever" down the public's throat -- that threw the famous switch that coursed the life-bringing electricity into the monster. And that creator is now hiding behind its criticism of the monster to shield itself from its shameful liability.

Since the monster finally ended up where he wanted all along, in Philly, the media has been crucifying him with a passion that would make Mel Gibson blush. "Eagles Will Regret Terr-ible Owens" screamed the headline passed from syndicated newspaper to newspaper, along with lines written by -- of all people -- the San Jose Mercury's own Niner-lover/Cowboys-hater Skip Bayless:

"Owens will wind up being a big reason the Eagles don't get back to the NFC title game ... Owens has crossed the line from football player into video-game superhero. He is a celebrity now, above risking catches over the middle and beyond blame. He is the 'Leon' character in the beer commercial: Ain't no 'we' in team, either."

All true; but remember, one can't become a character without an author.

The media is also ripping on the crybaby angle to the story: how it is pathetic that Owens ended up getting what he wanted thanks to his whining paying off in a sleazy backroom settlement. Or as Bayless put it, "The NFL's squeakiest wheel scared all parties involved into greasing his skids into Philadelphia."

We could go on and on with great quotes that are right on the money (such as MSNBC's take that "many people thought three sweat socks and a used wrist band would have been too much to give up for Owens"), and rest assured, Niner-haters are sitting back reading these barbs at Owens' expense, sipping on our favorite beverages of choice and laughing our asses off.

However, we would be remiss if we failed to ask:
- What took the media so long?
- Where was all this honesty concerning Owens when he was with the 49ers?
- And what do we win for being the only ones right about him all along?

Seems to us that just a few short months ago, back in the way-back-when of last July, Owens, Frisco and the Bandwagon were getting pumped for another heroic 49er Super Bowl run in 2003. The national media consensus was that Owens was a misunderstood hero. That he was the best WR in the game went without saying. It was only his behavior that was an issue for some, and as for those silly folks, they just didn't get that Owens was just "Funny Guy T.O.", a rebel just looking to have a good time in The Man's NFL. After all, wasn't that little pompom dance just oh-so-cute and original?

[Just as an aside, are we really the only ones that are completely perplexed by the idiots out there that find Owens "funny"? To us, it's like trying to figure out why the French find Jerry Lewis so hilarious. Owens would certainly be the NFL's Carrot Top in terms of baffling entertainment value, if not for the fact that Carrot Top looks exactly like Jeff Garcia with a wig and one of our readers writes us convinced they are one and the same. -- Ed.]

Just months ago, any mention of the lack of character in Owens' behavior was rationalized away by the grandiose profundity that "he backs up his talk with his play on the field." Then, as that play rotted away last season along with the 49ers' record and Owens started whining after every game, the excuse changed to "Owens' antics just prove what a great competitor he is because he hates losing."

And, finally, let's never forget the hilarious slew of articles declaring it was unfair to single out poor Terrell because he is no worse than any other NFL wide receiver. As the San Jose Mercury put it, "This is just what receivers do when they think they are not getting the football enough."

In other words, every stone was turned, all logic was bent over backwards to make sure Owens received every single possible avenue of excuse to completely absolve him from any personal responsibility in his whining fits and deplorable lack of character. In fact, the worm of media sentiment turned so much that it was the criticism of his behavior that was ridiculed. Just about all of those lovable "experts" were saying people -- not Owens -- just needed to "lighten up".

Only the NHS, standing alone, as usual, called B.S. on that load of manure and wrote "the entire truth [is] that Owens' play has never, ever backed up his enormous pie-hole". We pointed out how his "best ever" stats are a complete sham, and we called Owens straight up what he is -- a punk -- and demanded his suspension -- all at the time when it mattered most.

Now, only when his merlot-and-cheddar jersey has been removed can Owens' cowardly defenders in the media feel safe to rip him for what he is. And left out of all this prose going around the media today at his expense is that Owens couldn't become the untouchable celebrity that he now is all on his own. He needed an author -- the 49er Bandwagon -- and that author also deserves its share of blame. That means you, Skip.

Bayless is Exhibit "A" of yellow Bandwagon journalism. Just six months ago Bayless wrote to Owens, "I was one of your few cheerleaders the past couple of years because you always put your 'money' plays where your mouth was."

Funny, when Skip was writing/hating in Dallas, how come he wasn't a big cheerleader of the Cowboys when they were making all their "money plays"?

What Bayless should be writing to Owens is: "Because you put up 'Best Ever' stats thanks to 2-yard dink passes against the pathetic teams on the 49ers weak schedule, I cheered on all your punk antics, but now I'm going to rip on you because the 49ers sucked last year and you're no longer with them."

But don't wait for such truth to come from Skip or any of the hypocrites in the media. What it comes down to is simple bias, lack of professionalism, and Bandwagon mentality. Skip and his media brethren are Niner fans that built their careers crafting a story about the NFL starring the 49ers as the good guys, which included Owens, and are dedicated to riding that Bandwagon above any sort of logic or integrity. All along they spun his oh-so-funny-and-misunderstood image until the moment the Niner jersey came off. Now, as they rip into Owens, the lack of self-awareness of the media of their own culpability and cowardice in jumping off the bandwagon is amazing.

And the legitimate fan that saw through the Owens hype from the get-go? His reward for stomaching the Owens-Is-God propaganda all along is to now stomach these two-faces suddenly "telling it like it is" with Owens, without so much as an apology or admission of their own guilt.

The same message goes for those 49er fans who -- big surprise -- have now jumped off the Owens bandwagon. "Owens is the most over-hyped and overpaid player in the NFL!" one of the so-called "49er Faithful" was quoted as saying on NFL.com, "I live in San Francisco and I can tell you that no one here is sorry to see him go."

Now, it's hardly our place to accuse that guy of being a bandwagon fan, but we're so glad the world is safe now that the almighty Bay Area point of view has been sounded on the matter. What, does the Bandwagon really think we're just supposed to clap now that they got it right eight years too late and forget all their smug, holier-than-thou comments of the past? No, we'll reserve our accolades to our fellow Niner-haters that understood all along.

A final fascinating aspect to this affair is that Owens still doesn't get just what a media gravy train being on the 49ers was for him. He's still laughably playing the race card ("I'm like Rosa Parks") to claim he's been a victim of an unfair NFL and media, completely oblivious that if not for them, he wouldn't have his hype and millions in the bank. Heck, even Frankenstein's monster came to a form of understanding at the end, and he was pieced together from cadavers. Who knows where T.O.'s brain comes from?

It's commonly misunderstood that Frankenstein wasn't the monster in the book -- Frankenstein was the name of the creator. Perhaps the 49er Bandwagon should take a T.O. from ripping on T.O. to think about that mistake and ponder to whom the monster label should really be applied.

And then quickly get back to ripping T.O.

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