Today is indeed a sad day in sports. Clinton Portis, the eccentric, if not a little weird, running back for the Washington Redskins has announced he is retiring all of his alter-egos, including Dr. “I Don’t Know”, Sheriff Gonna Getcha and Southeast Jerome. While I am somewhat of a throwback to the days when players played and were seen to and not heard but I don’t mind personalities like Ports’ and Bengals wide receiver Chad Johnson.

The major difference between those from the cut of Portis and Chad Johnson and those from the cut of T.O. is that they are not having fun and enjoying themselves to the detriment of their team and their teammates. While Johnson’s list of those who have to cover 85 seems like its self-aggrandizing, everyone, even those on the list, know that’s just Chad being Chad.

It may seem hypocritical to say that it’s ok for Chad Johnson to dance in the endzone but it’s not ok for T.O. to consistantly draw attention to himself, on and off the field. And maybe it is. But I firmly believe that if Johnson or Portis believed that what they were doing was hurting their respective teams, they wouldn’t be doing it. T.O. has shown that he will do whatever he wants to do regardless of the outcome.

T.O. - The Day After

When first hearing of this wildly speculative story. I was skeptical but I wasn’t completely incredulous. This is an athlete who has shown himself to be so wildly insecure and starved for attention that the possibility that he would be so unhappy so as to take his own life was not, in and of itself, all that surprising.

However, after watching yesterday’s press conference, it becomes clear to me that Owens is not a man who took 35 vicoden and attempted to take his own life.

I found myself having an unusual thought yesterday as I contemplated the possibility that T.O. had actually tried to kill himself: I felt bad. As a Philadelphia Eagles fan for the better part of my functional life, I have nothing for disdain for Terrell Owens as a person. In the dictionary, next to the word “toxic”, you’ll see a picture of number 81. However, off the field matters, especially of this nature, are something entirely different. This isn’t a matter of off the field ridiculousness, it really is (or was) a matter of life and death. It’s moments like this that make you realize that athlete, no matter how much they try to differentiate themselves from those who pay to watch them, are just ordinary people with many of the same problems and afflicitions that plague all of us.

With the suicide rumor dismissed, I’m ready to get back to hating T.O.

I thought I’d take aim at Bruce Feldman’s column on ESPN.com that he publishes weekly, where he ranks the power conferences. Basically what Feldman does is evaluate the performance of a conference’s teams in any given weekend and then assign point values, plus or minus, and then tally those points to assess how a conference fared in that weekend.

What I can’t help but notice is the means he is going to to justify keeping the SEC on top for yet another week. While, I don’t disagree that the SEC is one of the tougher conferences in the country, I felt like this was an especially dull weekend in the SEC. What with Auburn playing Buffalo, Florida playing Kentucky and Georgia playing Colorado. However, Feldman still finds a way to give the SEC 1 point because LSU destroyed Arizona, a team that gave USC a little bit of a tough time this past weekend. So the SEC gets a point for a game it didn’t even play? Meanwhile, he gives Ohio State 1 point for beating Penn State in the slop. But what he actually writes is even more ludicrous: “Ohio State shuts down a ranked team, staying unbeaten (+1)”. Yeah no big deal.

I think it’s time that the Big Ten finally got whats due them. By season’s end, they will have 2 teams in the BCS bowl contention and probably a team in the national championship game. Forget that Wisconsin is as tough as unranked draw as there is, especially at Camp Randall, and Michigan State is one complete and utter fold job from being the conferences’ 4th undefeated team.

Stay tuned to next week’s column when Feldman the SEC receives two points for looking snazzy in their uniforms.