The Bills’ deal with Terrell Owens is full of conflict and steeped in risk, and it reeks of a last ditch effort to win a ring for the organization’s aged owner, Ralph Wilson Jr.
Terrell Owens has become the iconic iconoclast of the NFL – known to the media, players, and fans as a “Team Cancer.” He is deeply talented, both for his circus-like ability to catch footballs, and for the evil audacity that somehow tells him that its OK to call your quarterback gay (as he did to Jeff Garcia in San Fransisco), to say that his team would be undefeated if they had Brett Favre instead of Donovan McNabb at quarterback (as he did to the Philadelphia Eagles), and to call out his quarterback’s girlfriend as the reason for his team losing (as he did to Jessica Simpson while he played in Dallas).
Go ahead and Google “Owens Spitting Incident” or “Owens Hydrocodone Overdose” for more of his “iconic” history.
With Wilson’s own mortality certainly impending, the owner of the Bills must have spent a night or two going through some pensive, sobering realizations. Long gone are the glory days of the 1960’s, the AFL, Cookie Gilchrist and the ’64 and ’65 Championship teams.
The ’65 Bills were the last true pro sports team to ever win a title in the Nickel City, but with respect to today’s NFL record books, those titles aren’t worth a nickel apiece. The media and fans don’t consider AFL/AFC teams to really exist, let alone be the victors of actual trophies, until after the merger.
Back then, Ralph Wilson was a sort of businessman/saint. When the economy was tough on AFL teams, he bailed out the Oakland Raiders and the New England Patriots, with nickels out of his own pocket. That spirit of building and partnership was part of what earned him a place in Canton this year. So, he’s got his Hall of Fame induction, a couple AFL trophies, but no Superbowls. The Big Game that he helped create has eluded him all these years.
Now, the lustre from the 1960’s is long gone, and the only sheen left is the buffed shine on the red white and blue helmets on the Bills’ heads during Week One. Meanwhile, Wilson has stared out over the field, year after year, from behind his thick, wisened glasses, at his aged, failing football project.
The Bills are a losing team now. It looks like they might have to leave town, maybe even the country, just to stay viable – and for Wilson, there won’t be any offers for a bailout. Heck, the other owners have openly mocked his proposals for revenue sharing.
That irony has to sting a bit – in the back, and getting stabbed there tends to make men do things they normally wouldn’t.
So, left behind by most of his worldly peers, Wilson must have sighed a bit, after that midnight phone call when his GM told him that the Bills’ own quarterback, Trent Edwards, wanted to sign Owens. Since the 1990’s, Wilson has tried to build a winner out of tough, smart guys of dependable character – you know, the kind that won football games back in the ’60’s. Sure, Gilchrist was outlandish – but Owens? “T.O.” is the league’s demon personified when it comes to ugly behavior on the field, and uglier distractions off of it.
Maybe Wilson took his glasses off to wipe his face, as the proposal sunk in that night, and as he set down the heavy things, they probably made a reasonable thud when they hit the table, just like the sound of the sudden weight clunking into his heart when he called his GM back to mouth the words, “Make the deal.”
It’s not quite a “deal with the devil,” but close enough to literature’s Doc Faustus’ own last-ditch deal with Ol’ Pitch to gain immortality before his time was up. And Wilson knows he is in overtime.
These kinds of deals never end well.
Still, give Ralph Wilson Jr. some credit. With his team at The Crossroads, he pulled out and played the last card in his deck. He stared the demons of modern football in the eye, and took them to task.
So, to Hell with old time football.
And to Hell with losing.
At least, that’s Ralph’s wager.