FALSE MANHOOD: Terrell Owens

Terrell Owens

WOMEN:

"If there's anything I'm sorry about, it's getting involved with all that." He never actually dated any of the women, he says. One was a one-night stand, the others "repeat offenders." Owens, who has never been married, concedes he is "not a very good judge of character." Still, he "never suspected they were the types to do what they done in the past year." - Terrell Owens

FATHER

Now he is in court with all four women, whom he lumps together like one big bloodsucking blob. None of them are being fair, he says: "They know I'm not working; they know the deal." Although he never established regular visitation with any of the children through the courts, he says he sees the eldest three as much as he can when their mothers allow it. So bitter is his relationship with the mother of the youngest child, a son, that he has never met the boy.

FALSE PRAISE

"To say I regret anything would be a slap to my grandmother's face," Owens says, referring to the woman who raised him

FRIENDSHIP

He never had many friends—teammates never called him to party, he says, wrongly assuming that he was "too big" to socialize—and now, "I don't have no friends. I don't want no friends. That's how I feel."

WEALTH

Owens said financial advisers recommended by agent Drew Rosenhaus lost much of his money in highly leveraged ventures, then houses and apartments he thought he could rent out in a worst case scenario became dead weight in a housing market collapse (none of the properties are particularly excessive, but total a yearly mortgage of about $750,000), and $2 million was lost in an Alabama entertainment complex investment. That venture turned out to be illegal, and also claimed former Redskins running back Clinton Portis as a victim. "I hate myself for letting this happen," Owens told GQ. "I believed that they had my back when they said, 'You take care of the football, and we'll do the rest.' And in the end, they just basically stole from me."

Terrell Owens has always been an island of sorts. His brash personality and self-absorption routinely alienated his teammates during an NFL career that teetered between terrific and toxic, leaving him to fend for himself.
- Jeff Arnold

STEWARDSHIP

Owens earned around $80 million during his NFL career, but has found himself in deep financial trouble, despite never spending lavishly. - Jeff Arnold, journalist

a FATHER'S SONG

 

TERRELL OWENS

“I don't pay much attention to pro football players, but this cat, Terrell Owens, I have vague recollection of. I remember his eyes and the hurt distance in them when he was at press conferences. I knew a lot of cats like him on the streets so deep in old wounds they come to believe their shields and masks are living breathing creatures that say: ‘This is me! This is who I am!’ By his own words he wrote his story and foretold his future in his past. He followed his path of hurt to a path of distrust and the comfort of distance and distrust fed him and closed his eyes losing him in denials. He is still asleep and wounded and distant from himself and the truth: his truth.

I ask Spirit to send me a few more men like this I can help become themselves to prepare them to enter into the deeper mysteries and states of being Life has to offer. This is my word-song.” – Gregory E. Woods

Terrell Owens