Media and attention hog T.O. has likely ended his own NFL career after ripping apart a major ligament in his knee on the set of VH-1’s reality show “Single Ladies.” Owens reportedly had off-season surgery to repair the anterior cruciate ligament [ACL], an indisputably devastating injury that usually requires a year or more to recover — and that’s for an athlete in his prime, not an individual in the rocking-chair stages of his career.
We try to restrain ourselves from saying that Owens suffered the injury while preening for the cameras or lost his balance when his mouth was open and tripped over his own words. Owens’ spokesperson stated that the spotlight-guzzling prima donna of a wide receiver suffered the injury during a personal workout. But other sources are saying that he got injured while filming yet another reality show.
Whatever the case may be, Owens, 37, could have stepped on the gridiron for the final time. He would be 38 by the time he recovered from the ACL injury, give or take a few months, depending on his threshold for pain during the recovery and rehabilitation process. Worse, with the NFL mired in a lockout, and Owens not being signed to any team at the moment, no team will likely be that anxious to sign an aging, injured, self-proclaimed superstar who has the well-deserved reputation for ripping apart virtually every locker room he has ever entered. Donovan McNabb is still trying to pull out the knife that Owens jammed into his back during their playing time together.
Quarterbacks were already on high alert for the importation of this locker-room cancer into their organization, given Owens’ lack of self-restraint and proclivity for trashing his current and former signal-callers in the press and attempting to make himself look good at teammates’ expense. –terry shropshire
