Top Gossip You Missed in The Off-Season

(F&G) From life-saving heroics to bankruptcies, babies and life behind bars, here is First & Girl's Top 10 list of the off-season dirt you may have missed.

1.  T.O. makes headlines…for being a hero

A few hours after the ESPYS ended, ESPN reporter Sam Alipour was hailing a cab when he was hit by a Honda Civic. The first man on the scene to help him was none other than Terrell Owens. T.O. was on his way to an after-party when he witnessed the accident and rushed to the reporter’s side. Owens then helped Alipour to safe ground and didn’t leave his side until the paramedics arrived. In return, ESPN promised to write something nice about T.O. this year.

Kansas City tight end and our favorite vegan and new daddy, Tony Gonzalez, saved the life of a fellow patron at a restaurant in Huntington Beach over the summer when the man began to choke. Tony leaped to his rescue and performed the Heimlich maneuver despite the fact that he had never actually practiced it before, prompting the Chargers fan to proclaim himself Gonzalez’s No. 1 fan.

       2. Ocho Cinco and Pacman worked on their reps, and we don't mean their routes

Let's start with Ocho Cinco. Bengals receiver and then-named Chad Johnson claimed he could outswim Michael Phelps and challenged him to a race during an interview on Pardon the Interruption. Apparently #85’s prowess on his middle school swim team was all he needed to declare the only reason Phelps was winning so many medals was because he didn’t have any real competition in Beijing. Phelps reportedly accepted the "challenge," but we think the NFL should take it one step further. Forget the dancers, singers, light shows, fireworks and flyovers and drag a pool into the middle of the field for Super Bowl halftime. One length is all it’d need for ratings-busting entertainment.

Johnson also legally changed his last name to “Ocho Cinco” so he can actually put it on his jersey without being fined anymore. Speaking of which, Johnson is basically playing for free this year due to his very long list of them.

And from the "Players Who Don't Know how Good They Have it" file we have Adam "Pacman" Jones, whose antics are less entertaining but just as riveting. He'd had his fair share of troubles with the law since college, but an incident last February was the icing on the cake. Jones, who then played for the Tennessee Titans, was in a VIP booth at a Vegas strip club watching rapper Nelly and music producer Jermaine Dupri “make it rain” dollar bills over the course of a few songs. Jones wanted to make some “rain” himself and asked an employee to convert $3,400 into dollar bills – bills that he proceeded to shower over club-goers from the stage. Chaos ensued, and when all was said and done, a club bouncer ended up on the floor, shot and paralyzed by a shattered spine. Although Jones was not the shooter, club owners blamed Jones for the incident.  Jones was suspended from the league.

His trouble seemingly did not end there despite Pacman’s insistence that he would shape up. Pacman was accused of hitting a woman at a strip club in Atlanta in January – the woman, however, later withdrew the warrant. In May, he was ordered to pay $20,000 in gambling debt back to Caesars Palace, not long after he put his Nashville home on the market for $1.8 million. He defaulted on the mortgage in June and the property was auctioned off by the bank for $1.1 million.

Notwithstanding his off-field reputation-building activities, Pacman was traded this spring to the Cowboys and was notified in June by the NFL that he could participate in training camp. He was reinstated in August and will start for the Cowboys this season.

       3. Favre saga almost overshadows the Olympics

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