There's no T.O. in TEAM.



You know, I really feel a little sorry for the guy. Here is a man who clearly doesn't have many friends, if any. You'll see him, game after game, sitting alone on the bench with no teammates surrounding him. The other members of the team talk with each other, cheer with each other, commiserate with each other, but you rarely see anyone bothering to talk to T.O. When there is a conversation, you can assume he is angry that he isn't getting the ball enough, or that the plays aren't being crafted to take advantage of his abilities, or that the f$^%&*# safety is interferring with him and the f$^%&*# ref isn't calling it.

T.O. is exactly what he claims to be, a really incredible wide receiver. The problem is, he proclaims it WAY TOO OFTEN. Dude, we know you're good. Your teammates know you're good. Your opponents know you're good. The coaches know you're good. The media know you're good. The fans know you're good. You don't have to tell us every d&%^ day. We get sick of hearing it. Really. Shut up already and go play the game.

No one wants to hear about how fabulous someone is from his own mouth. It gets old in a hurry, and you start thinking more about how arrogant and self-absorbed that person is instead of how talented he is. And we don't need Drew Rosenhaus to tell us how great T.O. is, either. We've seen the film. Having Drew Rosenhaus as his agent just reminds me why I was never in a sorority: I didn't need to pay for my friends. Apparently T.O. does.

He had a great opportunity when he joined the Eagles team several seasons ago. It was the kind of team he could have been successful with. They have a great quarterback whose throwing style suited T.O. well. They've got loud-mouthed, energetic, somewhat thuggish guys on the team with whom he could have hung around and made friends. Instead, he ticked everybody off, and got suspended and shipped to Dallas.

And yet, as I said, I kind of feel sorry for T.O. It isn't entirely his fault he is a self-absorbed jacka$$. He's been told by myriads of people how great he is, and how no one appreciates him, and how fabulous his mad skillz are, and all that junk. He's essentially been groomed to be the ultimate prima donna, a spoiled brat to end all spoiled brats. Look at his circumstances. He's paid obscene amounts of money to play a game. He's a wide receiver, a position designed for attention-seekers. These guys are big, fast, and incredibly graceful (well, they're supposed to be). They get much of the glory in the game. So when you are really good at it, you can expect to spend plenty of time in the limelight. This is why we have so many spoiled receivers (T.O., Randy Moss, Keyshawn "Throw me the d&$% ball" Johnson). T.O. has also played with some of the best quarterbacks in the game, so he's received plenty of passes and gained oodles of yardage. And when everyone talks to you about how wonderful you are, you can't help but start to believe it. He's been pumped full of this by his family, his coaches, his teammates, and the media. You can't watch Sports Center without hearing something about him. It's no wonder he's full of himself; everyone has filled him with it. I had a spoiled brat student once (well, way more times than just once, but I'm thinking of one specific incident). I always wondered where the attitude problem came from, until the day I had a conference with the parents. The mother told me that this particular girl had always had trouble relating to her peers because they were "so intimidated by her beauty". Well, of course if the kid has been taught the world revolves around her, she'll try to force it to do just that, to the annoyance of the rest of the world. T.O. is like that girl. He's been told that he is everything, he is the driving force, he is the raison d'etre (no idea if that is correctly spelled in any way). Of course he is going to act this way! And now we are getting tired of him and his antics, and he doesn't understand what he has done wrong. All he has done all this time is act exactly how we've expected him to. And now we're trying to punish him for it.

I can't condone his behavior, because ultimately he does make the choice every week to be an a$$. He could change if he really wanted to. But I can't blame him entirely, because we have created this monster ourselves. So I will continue to feel a little sorry for him, sitting alone on the bench with no teammates to hang with.