T.O. Needs to Give Himself a Time-Out

"That's better. For me. Not so much for everybody else, though."

Cincinnati Bengals wide-receiver and future foot-in-mouth Hall of Fame-candidate Terrell Owens has taken a lot of flak recently for comments he made towards New York Jets cornerback Darrelle Revis when really he should be shown some measure of leniency. I mean, fans should come to expect this sort of thing from the guy by now.

We're talking about a guy who, for reasons unknown, still finds it necessary to lash out at quarterback Donovan McNabb despite neither playing on the team that first brought the odd couple together. We're talking about a guy who whines so much about getting balls thrown in his direction that it must serve as overcompensation for, well, use your imagination. And, finally, we're talking about a guy that is so superficial he's not even willing to go after the "real" Kim Kardashian (because you can only be so real after so many undeniable plastic surgeries), but hired a dating agency to fix him up with a lookalike. The trend here isn't towards classlessness. It's towards idiocy. Owens may be talented, but it's clear he's lost a few brain cells as a result of too many hard hits to the head over the years.

So, when Owens called Revis "just an average corner" in front of reporters on Tuesday it wasn't so much a case of him trying to insult the two-time Pro Bowler, as it was of him putting on his dunce cap, or maybe even forgetting to wear his (non-football) headgear altogether and falling down few moments beforehand, as he's clearly prone to doing. There's a such thing as playful trash talk among longtime rivals and then there's getting an opponent all pissed off and motivated two days before facing them. Here's exactly what Owens said after calling Revis "average" and before the Jets beat them 26-10 on Thursday:

"Everybody has assessed his abilities as far as what he did last year, shutdown corner, this and that. He did very well last year. But I think I'm looking forward to the challenge just like he's looking forward to it," he said, which taken by itself isn't that bad. But when you also consider that Owens referred to Revis as a slouch in a word-association game with the NFL Network last January, you have to wonder why Owens is so confrontational. Did Revis secretly bag himself a Kardashian and Owens is just acting like a fool out of retaliatory jealousy? Of course it's more likely the fact that in four head-to-head meetings, Owens just has one touchdown against Revis. Some average corner.

In a world where reporters are drawn to the colourful characters that always have something new and interesting to say, Owens is almost singlehandedly making a case for professional athletes to continue turning to the canned and cliched one-liners that everyone, not just journalists, hates. Because every other word out of his mouth seems to be bulletin-board material for the opposition. But, then again, this kind of behaviour should be expected from a character so interesting that he and teammate Chad Ochocinco have dubbed themselves Batman and Robin. It's almost as if by referring to Revis and fellow Jets cornerback Antonio Cromartie as Ren and Stimpy, as he did on The T.Ocho Show, that he's not trying to incite anger in the two but rather recruit them into his cartoonish universe in which he's actually still relevant. Pathetic is more like it.