Original Airdate: Monday, September 21, 2009. This is a part of the 93-Second Sports Shot series. 93-Second Sports Shots air weekday nights at 6pm.

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If you pay enough attention to the mainstream sports media, you know beyond any sort of equivocal doubt that Terrell Owens is a bad guy. Now, T.O has never beaten his girlfriend, he's never been caught driving around with 3 kilos of cocaine in his trunk, he's never been connected to the "mysterious" death of a former enemy, he's never participated in a cruel dog fighting ring, he's never pointed a gun at his wife and infant child, heck T.O has never even gone out for a cruise on his motorcycle with a loaded shotgun in a guitar case like Delonte West did a couple days ago. No, T.O has never done any of those things, but ask any major sports writer or broadcast personality and he'll probably tell you that T.O is a cancer, a bad influence, a negative personality, a slacker, a whiner, and the spawn of the anti-Christ himself. Well, maybe not that last one.

Now, I'm not saying that T.O. doesn't have his negative traits. He does seem to have a tendency to split a locker room and to get perturbed when he feels he isn't being included enough in a team's offense. But we've now gotten to a point where T.O is incapable of so much as opening his mouth without the media jumping on him like pack of wild dogs and accusing him of being a malcontent. After the Bills lost to the Patriots in heartbreaking fashion last week, T.O refused to comment and the media criticized him for being bitter. A few days later, he addressed the loss and casually mentioned the name of Bills quarterback Trent Edward. Of course, the media took his quote of context and every major outlet reported the next day that T.O had thrown Edwards under the bus. Today, a friend of T.O used twitter to toss a light hearted insult at Tony Romo. Naturally, yahoo sports columnist Matthew Darnell felt the need to chastise Owens over a comment for which he wasn't even responsible.

I can't explain the media's fascination with T.O. I do know that I bought into the hype before he signed with Buffalo, and I also know that multitudes of casual NFL fans are buying into the new hype. When T.O leaves Buffalo, probably after this season, the media is going to pore over every quote and comment with a fine-toothed comb in order to piece together “evidence” that he left on bad terms with Trent Edwards and the management of the team. Why? Well I'm not sure, but my guess is that it's because people are lazy and it's easier to rehash an old opinion than to create a new one.

Again, I'm not saying T.O is the perfect teammate. In fact, he's remarkably imperfect. But in a day and age when there are enough legitimate bad guys in the NFL to fill up a phone book, what is the point in continuing to demonize a man who plays hard on the field, volunteers frequently for underprivileged children off the field, has never had a run-in with the law, and whose only crime is speaking his mind at inopportune times?

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