Terrell Owens, Bill'ding a New Relationship with Buffalo

(Photo by Ronald Martinez/Getty Images)

Terrell Owens, the Mega-Star WR, has arrived in Buffalo, New York.

To make a long story short, Buffalo, NY is not a major city. It's not even a major populated area. But if I didn't know that before hand, I'm certain I would have thought that after watching the throng of wildly cheering fans waiting for TO to appear at the local airport.

Now before we go any further, I'm going to let you in on a little secret. I've had a long and estranged relationship with the NFL player known as TO for the past 5+ years. I've loved him, I've hated him and for the most part I've respected him, even if it's usually only as a player and not as a person.

If anybody has a good reason for writing a story about him, it would probably be me.

It all started way back when Terrell Owens was still playing with Jeff Garcia for the San Francisco 49ers. Many of you know that Owens was tutored on the lap of arguably the best WR in NFL history, Jerry Rice.

When Jerry Rice left the city of 'Frisco, the timing was right and the stars were aligned for Terrell Owens to bloom into the next great wide receiver. Where there was once a young, talented and quiet receiver drafted in the 3rd round out of Chattanooga, there stood a loud-mouthed, egotistical star, better known as the player known as TO.

At this point, somewhere before the 2003 season, TO began to be a part of a string of team incidents causing a growing rift between himself and QB Jeff Garcia. He also insinuating that Garcia was homosexual in a Playboy interview.

Both Pro-Bowl players did things that we're not about to get into; Suffice it to say that by the end of the season, TO really wanted out.

He wanted to go to Baltimore.

This is where my relationship with TO began. Rumors of an all-star receiver, a player that would instantly become an upgrade for our woeful passing game, were running rampant. I was hooked. I wanted him to come here, he wanted to come here, everything was about to change.

Well, everything was gonna change, just not how I wanted.

Now most of my regular readers know that I am, at heart, a Baltimore Raven's fan. What some of you know is that I also have a great deal of love and respect for another NFL team as well, the Philadelphia Eagles.

To sum up what happened over the course of that off-season in a nutshell, TO evidently did NOT want to come and play for the Ravens. According to him he never did, the trade that would have sent him here from the 49ers had been totally set-up by his agent and the Raven's management team.

Even though legally he was bound by the terms of the trade, something that eventually had to be handled by a third-party Arbitrator, he somehow found a loophole that allowed him to deal with another team. This was after he and his agents had missed the deadline that would allow him to explore options without the team's approval.

The team he said that he would really like to play for was the Philadelphia Eagles. A win-win situation, right? Well, I guess I could forgive him even though he had openly stated that he would never play for Baltimore. At this point I was still young and naive.

At least he would end up playing for my second favorite team.

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