A league built on media and revenue, the NFL needs characters like Terrell Owens. Not a player but a character, the drama of Terrell Owens provides people with jobs in the sports industry. Without his shenanigans on and off the field, the NFL would be nothing more than just a game, rather than the entertainment package that it markets itself as. Like gasoline to a fire, Owens fuels the media. To go a week without Terrell Owens on the news can be compared to agricultural states going without rain, they need him.
So, if the media and league needs characters like Owens so much, why is it that they only acknowledge them when they are acting out? In a pro-bowl like season, Terrell Owens has received considerable less attention than he did last year while leading the league with dropped passes. In every interview with or about Terrell Owens, the media tries to bait someone into a negative comment either from or about the player. Why is it that they can’t respect him as a good player? With numbers matching Brady and Manning, and a personality greater than both players put together, why is it that Brady and Manning are in every commercial and Owens is in none. He is good enough to sell your tickets but not to market your cell phone. The last TV exposure I can remember with Owens was a controversial “Desperate Housewives” skit for a Monday Night Game.
Try to imagine a league without Owens; you couldn’t. Owens brings life to a league trying so hard to go corporate. Owens is that rebel that refuses to change himself for the better of the whole. Though this is selfish, the league secretly loves it. He is what I like to call, “a necessary evil.” The league needs him, but they need him to act out some. Not to break any laws but just show his hind parts to the league and its rules every once and awhile.
The league should pay more dues to its characters. Without them there would be no life and no money. The media feeds off of these characters and the league feeds off of the media. They all need each other. The media knows that people want excitement. They want touchdowns, fumbles, interceptions, but more importantly they want drama. Here in the 21st century, drama dominates television. Every major network has some form of reality TV on it and with reality TV you get drama. Just look at Bill Parcells, he was hired for the simple fact by ESPN to give dirt about Terrell Owens. Every week he was asked to give some negative comment about “tha player,” but as he continued to speak positively about “Terrell Owens,” he was featured less and less in the coming weeks. So the media loves T.O., but they can’t let everyone know it, they have to keep this affair on the down low, so T.O. keep doing what you do.
2 comments:
In my opinion the reason that T.O. doesn't get a lot of the attention like Manning or Brady is that their is still a very negative image about him. Corporate America has been burned by sports a lot recently when they have trusted their brand image with an athlete that then goes and throws mud on their name with his personal actions. People still see T.O. in his ridiculus holdout where he was doing sit ups in his driveway. I think a lot of corporate america sees him as a ticking time bomb and no company wants to have you think of them when that time bomb goes off. It's all a risk and reward situation right now.
I think T.O. is great for the NFL. He's a news maker and he gets people to watch for many different reasons; whether it's his play on the field or his tirades off of the field. I just don't understand why the media and the NFL are often so hard on him (ex: the NFL ridiculously fining him for a uniform violation). It's ok for Chad Johnson to have crazy touchdown dances but not for T.O. He makes the jobs of the media very easy. He gives them a story. T.O. makes the the jobs of NFL executives easier by drawing fans to his games. I think people need to lay off of T.O. He's a great player and an equally great entertainer.
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