T.O.= bad romance

Today's early reports said the Jets had 'reached out' to wide receiver Terrell Owens. I could not be happier they did not take his hand in marriage.

This offseason the Jets have already added two stars of the past decade, LaDainian Tomlinson and Jason Taylor. The two bring big name appeal but more notably declining stat lines.

The Jets will hope those two revert back to their glory days- or at least something close to them. But what they didn't need now is another thirty-something whose name proceeds his game of late. Yes, that's you, T.O.

There's a reason why very few teams were rushing to sign the 36-year-old Owens. Actually, there's more than one.  After a happy honeymoon, Owens almost always finds some cause for annulment. In San Francisco, it was Jeff Garcia. In Philadelphia, it was Donovan McNabb. In Dallas, it was Jerry Jones.

It's not just the attitude though. Sometimes you can put up with an ego for immense production. But Owens' production is on the decline. After having one of his best seasons in 2007, his numbers have gone down in each of the past two. In 2008, they were still strong, 69 receptions, 1,052 yards, 10 TD.

Not so much in 2009. Owens reached the end zone just five times to go along with 829 yards and 55 receptions. Maybe it was just the environment. There is no doubt that playing with one of the worst offensive units and the duo of Trent Edwards and Ryan Fitzpatrick did nothing to help Owens. But he did not do much to raise their games either.

Most great players eventually go into decline. Owens has had a great career. There's no shame in saying that he may not be the same player now at 36. For the Bengals, it may be worth the risk to see if he can recapture his glory, just like the Jets hope Taylor and Tomlinson will.

The team to take that risk is rightfully not the Jets, one that already traded for Santonio Holmes this offseason and Braylon Edwards during the 2009 campaign. In fact, Owens might not have even been the third best receiver on this Jets team that also has Jerricho Cotchery.

Holmes will be out for the season's first four weeks. But when he comes back, Owens would be what, the fourth receiver? On a team that prides itself on running the ball?

It didn't make sense- for either party. For Owens, it was a distinct possibility to fall further into on-the-field anonymity. For the Jets, it would have been overkill.

No T.O. on 'Hard Knocks' now but instead it's two 'reality stars' in the fall's newest drama...a 16 episode order to see if T.O. will be....'Ochocinco's (and the Bengals') Ultimate Catch.' Eat your heart out, VH1.

When Fear Dictates

In two incidents on vastly different scales but with similar outcomes, the power and influence of fear has come about in the decision making process.

Three days ago, the Huntington School Board voted to shutdown Jack Abrams Intermediate School due to shootings and violence in the area.

A few days ago, it was decided that some journalism classmates and friends from OU would no longer be going on a month long trip to Uganda.

Now, the magnitude of violence upon which each decision was based is surely greatly different. The OU trip was canceled because of a terrorist attack that happened just over a week earlier in the country, when al-Shabab insurgents took innocent lives of those gathered to watch the World Cup final.

While Uganda has experienced relative peace in the years since the Juba talks, you cannot fault the decision to cancel this trip. It is just unfortunate timing for those who were planning on going. That said, there is a real risk. Terrorist attacks do not happen everyday. But to be in a third world country, which was just attacked, for a month is risky.

Now, to a local level. The closing of Jack Abrams Intermediate due to area violence. Unlike the incident in Uganda, the violence in the Huntington Station area has been going on for years, not affecting the children at the intermediate school. I went to school there a a decade ago and it was not the safest area. It was not rare to be on the playground and see a condom beside a Pringles can as a fourth grader. But school went on. I still remember many of my teachers and experiences from the three years I spent there relatively fondly.

So, there have been a few shootings in the area now in the past few weeks. The final straw in this process came with the shooting death of a 16-year-old, which occurred around 1:25 A.M, the wee hours of a Sunday morning. Yes, these violent incidents are a problem and yes, there has been a proliferation with four between July 4th and July 13th. But the violence has not had any relation to the day-to-day activities at the school. Are the perpetrators really dumb enough to have a shootout near a now heavily policed school in broad daylight? I highly doubt it.

This is an instance of the School Board showing cowardice, running away from the problem rather than working to address it. There's always an easy way out. It may look more appealing. But in the long term it usually doesn't solve the problem. Sometimes it only makes it worse or, even leads to new ones.

So now what? Supposed safety in favor of: more overcrowded classes, less resources with students jammed into fewer schools. Dilution as a result of fear. And forget this community that has been plagued by violence. Let's scamper away now and take away one of the few positive foundations of the area. Except there's the suggestion of an...alternative school down the line. What does this say to the community? The area is not good enough to school mainstream students but those who may choose alternative school can handle it.  

Fear is a sentiment to be taken seriously. In some cases (the Uganda trip), its ramifications are warranted. In others (Jack Abrams Intermediate), fear leads to even more dangerous overreactions than the supposed danger that caused it in the first place.

The Fallout

As the three guys, 25, 26, and 28 years old, sat in the midst of the party at American Airlines Arena, they looked like a bunch of 18-year-olds.

They didn't just get an invite to their first college party.

They were the main attraction.

Wade, Bosh, and James have acted like kids all along. They were like three high school kids, gallivanting and eating up all the attention that the adults were willing to feed them. They did their best to keep the spotlight on them, posting pictures of themselves, like this one, like teenage girls taking a million Photo Booth shots on their new Macbook and uploading them to Facebook.

And so in the end, it turned into what in essence was similar to a bunch of high school kids making a college decision. The two best friends, Dwayne and Chris, decided they really wanted to go to school together. But while they had made the decision, their other best friend, LeBron, was away at camp.

They tried to convince him to go away for school. He wasn't sure. He had grown up in his hometown. All his best friends were there. He was most popular in high school, and even called the King...of Homecoming and Prom.

But his best friends were never a good influence on him. For years, they told him he had to get out of his little town. Move on to bigger things, where he could have more than just love and adoration.

It all started when they took a trip to China and had the perfect time together. Some said they decided then that they had to go to college together. It would be just like the trip to China! 

So, finally, after months and months, LeBron made his decision.

He tried to be a good guy about it but all his friends saw him as a traitor, leaving them behind and only caring about himself in the process. He chose them over us. They untagged him in all their Facebook pictures, burned all of his clothes he had left at their houses. The school's principal even sent out a letter saying he quit on all of them.

In the end, that's what this really is. Three best friends deciding to go to the party school in South Beach. It's James taking the easy way out, going to school with two of his best friends, so he won't have to do all the work alone, so that they'll help him write his papers and get good grades.

It's three men well into their twenties acting like 18-year-olds. They're the kids who leave high school acting as if they're the coolest, saying that their choice was the best and they will do better than everyone else. But when they go to college, they're the three kids that walk around together with an air of arrogance, the ones everyone can't stand.

It's James throwing away all of the friendships he had made over the course of seven years. But you know what's funny, sometimes the kid that was "Mr. Everything" in high school, doesn't do so well in college. Sometimes he even ends up needing to go home.

Well, James can't go home now.

Cleveland won't have him back. But maybe, one day, he'll realize he made a mistake. That those "best friends" weren't as good of friends as he thought. That those good grades he got by having them write the last page of his paper or take every class with him, wouldn't be as fulfilling as doing it by himself.

James' fans called themselves 'Witnesses.' Now all he can do is 'witness' the fallout from his decision.

Ohio's response to 'The Decision'

What is there to say? Since I go to school in Ohio, here's a sampling of Facebook statuses (some censored) from Cleveland fans and Ohio natives following the worst made-for-TV event since the latest Bachelorette reunion special.

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chalk up another heartbreak... still love my cavs

LeBron... You just murdered Cleveland.. Have fun in Miami. I hate knowing that you live 5 minutes away from me and know that you just destroyed something good

 lebron james = the new art modell

 wow. thanks a lot lebron. i hope your plane crashes on your way to Miami.

Cleveland sports is over...

R.I.P. Cleveland

Cant blame him...

My little brother is now my best chance at winning a championship... even if it is little league

F*** LEBRON!

Why would Lebron want to stay when most of Cleveland doesn't even want to stay?

dang. people don't get this animated when their good friends take a new job in a new city. besides, it's not like any of you even met the guy. it's a little game, and the sun is probably gonna rise tomorrow... just not on cleveland. BUT HEY, AT LEAST HE DIDN'T GO TO NEW YORK!

Congrats LeBron...for stabbing all us Cleveland fans in the back..F*** you, u r a big attention whore and need to stop being a lazy a** mother f***er...Dan Gilbert you are the man

Tobetray someone is one thing to betray an entire city and state is an
act of self-absorbed cowardice. I am a witness to a TRAITOR

Cleveland fan since birth. No self-centered person who shows up an entire city will change that. At some point, Cleveland will have its day.

PUT YOUR MONEY WHERE YOUR MOUTH IS DAN GILBERT

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A little bit of perspective, a decent amount of sadness and a LOT of anger. As much as I wanted LeBron to come to NY, you can't help but feel for the Cleveland fans. He couldn't just hold a press conference in the new city like every other player does. He milked this for everything it was worth and made himself into the spectacle. And he took the easy way out. He didn't try to bring a title to a championship-starved city with passionate fans (Cleveland, New York) or one with a real solid TEAM with a young core (Chicago). He has now become hated by those cities' fans and many more.

He made the move that will give him no chance of being up there with Jordan or Kobe. And he did have a chance to be in that breath. With Wade AND Bosh, he will never be THE guy. It's one thing to win a championship with very good role players around you (Jordan). It's another to orchestrate a move to sign with two fellow free agent superstars to do it.  More to come on this soon.

The Circus is Leaving Town

...or maybe it's just arriving.

Tomorrow night at 9pm, LeBron James makes the decision all the world has awaited for months and months. It is only fitting that we lucky viewers are spoiled with a one-hour special to commemorate this monumental event.

All sarcasm aside, this is a pretty big deal. Yes, this whole process has been ridiculous. Yes, NBA free agency has become a glorified form of college recruiting, except these guys are too old for this (and are getting big paydays no matter what). Yes, LeBron, Wade and Bosh have made themselves look like clowns at the Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey, posting incessant Twitter updates, pictures and now the final straw, this LeBron primetime special.

But as much as the media, the players, the teams and owners have created a circus out of this, you can't tell me you're not at least a little curious where this guy is going. Sure, he hasn't won a championship yet. That said, he is the league MVP and his decision will completely change one team's fortune.

As much as LeBron has reaffirmed for me how much of an attention seeker he is and that it is all really about him, I can't say I don't want him to come to my team. And it's not really about him, it's more about my selfish desires. As a Knicks fan, the past decade has been one really long wait which has yet to reap any benefit. Ever since the 1999 Finals and Patrick Ewing's departure, it has been a long, painful waiting game.

Back in the early 2000s, it was waiting for Allan Houston's $100 million dollar contract to come off the books. I remember looking forward to 2007, when the Knicks would finally have cap freedom. When that team of players more broken down then the toys exiled to the tots at Sunnyside daycare would finally be sent to the dumpster. Can you believe that Allan Houston, Shandon Anderson, Jerome Williams, Maurice Taylor and Jalen Rose made more than $60 million in the 2006 season?

It takes too long to list and subsequently explain the disastrous tenures of two of the worst GMs in NBA history, Scott Layden and Isiah Thomas. From 2000 to 2008, these two absolutely buried a team that had been a perennial playoff contender. New York became the dumping ground for players who didn't deserve the money they were making. Layden pulled in most of the names from the earlier group and Isiah did his best to outdo his predecessor putting together this backcourt for the 2006-7 season: Houston (retired): $20M, Stephon Marbury: $18M, Rose: $16M, Steve Francis: $15M and Crawford: $7M. Oh, but Isiah brought in some big-time big men, Eddy Curry through trade and Jerome James through a five-year, $30-million deal more bloated than Curry's waistline.

The Knicks not only became absolutely irrelevant. They became the joke of the NBA. I am a big jersey guy. The last Knicks jersey I am willing to display is my Patrick Ewing one. The only other one I have from the past decade is Latrell Sprewell's #8 I got as a gift. That's now in jersey purgatory in my closet.

So, this is a taste of what it has been like to be a Knicks fan for the past decade. With Donnie Walsh and Mike D'Antoni coming in, there was a glimmer of hope and another imposed wait, summer of 2010. Now it's here. All of this misery has led up to tomorrow night.

Amar'e Stoudemire's signing was a good first part. But what is Buzz Lightyear without Woody? LeBron is the cool toy on the block. The one that garners the most attention and everyone waits for to rescue them.

If LeBron does choose NY, there will be thousands of new Knicks fans. It will be obnoxious and maddening. But the diehard Knicks fans who have been through this decade know what tomorrow night means. The last really good thing to happen to this franchise was when the lottery balls worked in its favor and it got Patrick Ewing. That was 1985. Since then, there's been Reggie, MJ, John Starks' nightmarish game seven, Hakeem, Robinson and Duncan, James Dolan, Layden, Isiah, and on and on and on.

So, I'm looking forward to tomorrow night. This one guy can change this franchise's future. I can picture the Garden being electric again. Or him back in Cleveland, or even worse in Chicago or Miami. All we can do now is sit and wait. 24 hours seems like a lot but Knicks fans can handle a wait, just no more shattered hopes.

Oh my...Ghana

At the 121st minute of Ghana and Uruguay's marathon quarterfinal, Asamoah Gyan had a chance to win the game outright. Everyone in the stadium, watching on TV,  knew it would be extra time's final kick. Make it inside the 8 yard wide, 8 foot tall net and win. Miss and let down not only your country but the entire continent of Africa, of which your country is its last hope.

If we can compare Ghana to the Buffalo Bills for a minute, Gyan was Scott Norwood and 'Wide Right' was 'Just High.'

It was a final act of drama in an extra time that plodded along slowly with few scoring chances. That is until Ghana's free kick in the game's final moments. Multiple tries at the net, protagonist Ghana thwarted by the Uruguayan antagonist Luis Suarez' handball.

But as is necessary in every good drama, the antagonist set up the most compelling moment. Suarez' desperation stop gave his country hope, saving a goal. It also gave protagonist Ghana a chance to have the storybook ending. One shot for a spot in the semis.

It was not to be a happy romantic comedy that predictably ends with smiles upon the protagonists' faces and everyone crying tears of joy. Instead, Gyan missed the game-winning penalty kick.

Minutes later, he made a penalty kick in the shootout. But it was no longer a golden goal. Uruguay won the penalty kicks 4-2. No storybook ending for the home continent's final fleeting hope. For the first time, you could hear something besides the roar of vuvuzelas at this World Cup. It was a chorus of boos from the African crowd.

Tears, devastation on the Ghanaian faces. The patented empty feeling that sits in your stomach, sitting and staring at their loss. Some say it's 'just a game.' But in the World Cup, it's not just a game. It's four years worth of work, four more years to wait, the pride of a nation, of a continent. For Ghana and it's African faithful, it will be four years to dwell on what could have been.

Scott Norwood was a good kicker. At the time of the Super Bowl miss, he was Buffalo's all-time leading scorer. He even followed up 'Wide Right' with big kicks in the next postseason. Asamoah Gyan is a good player. He scored the winning goal against the U.S.

But sometimes it's hard to remember the good when the misstep is so deflating. Norwood is always remembered for that infamous 'Wide Right' moment. Time will only tell if Gyan is remembered for more than being a crossbar's width away from African history.