T.O. has B.O.

The esteemed owner of this blog picked a good time to be away from his beloved Eagles. Between Todd Pinkston being out for the season, VU alum Brian Westbrook holding out, and the morale disaster that is Terrell Owens, it's not a good time to be an E-A-G-L-E-S fan.

T.O. stretched the fiasco to new heights yesterday by entertaining fans and the press at his fancy home in Moorestown, NJ. I live about 5 minutes from his house, so I've been able to observe some of the party. I have to say he's managed to surprise me with the amount of contact he's given his fans - playing basketball in the driveway, throwing a football, and even doing some exercises in the front yard. Maybe this is some carefully orchestrated effort by T.O.'s insane agent, Drew Rosenhaus, at shoring up fan support for T.O., but in the opinion of this non-Eagle fan, I think Owens is just bored. He just wants to have fun and get paid well. Of course, other Eagles fans have now set up camp near his house with signs saying "T.O. must go", so it's not all pats on the back for the Superstar.

ESPN's John Clayton points out that the Eagles knew what they were getting into when they signed him, and that they structured his contract to give them protection in the event of the very shenanigans we're seeing right now:

The Eagles knew Owens could be trouble. They put clauses in his $49 million to protect themselves for situations like Wednesday. According to his contract, Owens could be forced to pay back $1.725 million of his $2.3 million signing bonus if he's involved in any incident that is considered conduct detrimental to the team.

I think we're all in agreement that this episode is detrimental to everyone involved. The bottom line is that the Eagles need to settle this one way or the other so they can spend their energy on winning games and not taming a talented but tumultuous T.O.