What Terrell Owens really said

As the value of my free time increased after my teenage years, it's been a long time since I seriously watched any football, other than a few college bowls and post-season pro games. Thus the Terrell Owens-Donovan McNabb controversy really didn't interest me, and I dismissed Owens as a crybaby who wasn't getting his way and needed to learn good sportsmanship.

However, I took umbrage with McNabb's accusation on Wednesday that Owens committed "black-on-black crime" -- all because Owens said the Eagles would be better off (in fact, he said "undefeated") had they Brett Favre as the quarterback. Is McNabb so insecure that he needs to play the race card? Though I think Owens has a big mouth, I immediately doubted he brought up Favre because of a type of homoracism.

And as a matter of fact, Owens didn't bring up Favre. The ESPN interviewer did. Rush Limbaugh isn't perfect, but I agree with him more than I disagree, and since he knows football, I had a feeling he would have had something to say about McNabb's latest. After a few minutes on Rush's site, I found this transcript from his Thursday show, revealing what was really said at Owens' interview last November:

Michael Irvin: "What do you think if Brett Favre were the quarterback?"

Terrell Owens: "Oh, I think we'd be undefeated."

There you go. Rush added,

Now, clearly Owens is trying to get under McNabb's skin, but he didn't bring it up. Michael Irvin brought it up -- and of course who is it that's making race out of all of this? ESPN and McNabb! So they're all upset here. Owens supposedly suggested a white quarterback, and that really burned McNabb because that's "black-on-black crime." Owens suggested nothing. He was responding to a question posed by Michael Irvin, who is a black guy. We may as well identify everybody's race in all this. This is just laughable to me. I mean, ESPN bringing up race; McNabb bringing up race; Owens sort of subtly involving race by deigning to answer the question, and everybody getting the quotes wrong, and everybody is missing the story. I mean, McNabb doesn't even know what he's talking about in this case, because Owens was just sitting there answering a question that was posed to him by a reporter. Now, if Owens had sat there and said, "Who would you like to be quarterback?" and had himself said Brett Favre, then McNabb might have a point, but I thought race didn't matter to any of these people anyway. I thought we were long past that.

Damn straight. It's completely shameful how ESPN has misrepresented that part of Owens' interview. In all fairness, I wonder if McNabb realizes what Owens actually said, but that doesn't excuse his ridiculous "black-on-black crime" accusation.