Ready to Blow

Look and listen closer, however, and Owens' motives may already be a tad misplaced. During individual weight-lifting sessions in Oxnard he often grunted his way through repetitions of "Ten...eight... ten...eight," his return to Philly on October 8 playing the role of carrot.

"I've been looking forward to that game since the schedule came out," Owens said one afternoon. "That one won't be just another game."

Meanwhile, the other 80 players in camp and their coach have a different, more unified goal.

Says Parcells, "Everything we do here is geared toward one thing, getting ready for Jacksonville."

Tick...tick...tick...

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Therein lies Dallas' delusion, naïvely counting on T.O. to remain the superstar player he's always been yet somehow transform into the selfless person he never was. Because while Terrell Owens is a freak who can Taser a team to greatness, T.O. is a freak show capable of ripping the soul from a franchise.

"In the business world I'd probably take a look at his track record and I wouldn't hire him," says none other than Staubach a week before camp. "In sports you've got to consider the risk-reward factor, and he could make a huge difference in the Cowboys getting to the playoffs and beyond. It's a heck of a deal if he's a new person. If he learns to put the team ahead of himself. I hope it works, but there's nothing really in his past that says this is going to be any different.

"Besides, it seems like he doesn't like quarterbacks."

Actually, T.O. doesn't like anybody he doesn't trust. Complicating the matter, he doesn't trust anybody he doesn't like. But before you can defuse a bomb, you need to know how it was built.

Owens developed his general distrust as a defense mechanism for being raised in a dysfunctional Alabama home by his 17-year-old mom and disciplinarian grandmother. Believe it or not, the NFL's cockiest adult was a profoundly insecure kid. In T.O. , Owens tells of being picked on for his dark skin, crooked teeth and skinny frame. He says once while he slept on the bus, the school bully spit into his open mouth. In his '04 book, Catch This!, Owens writes of flirting at age 11 with a neighborhood girl, only to be warned by a family friend to stay away. Why? The girl, turns out, was his half-sister. Not exactly the ideal introduction to your dad.

During the last year, Irvin, well-versed in sideline tantrums and illegal entanglements, has become one of T.O.'s best friends, biggest role models and one of the few allowed to psychologically pry into the real Terrell.

"No doubt, there are authority-figure issues with T.O.," Irvin said shortly after Owens' signing last spring. "I have some regrets. I told him he'll wish 10 years from now he didn't have those same regrets."

There are excuses, more flimsy than viable, for talents like Owens and Larry Brown and J-Lo being shoved into a Bedouin existence. Like no other Cowboy before him, Owens, now with his third team in four years, has a past marked by a tendency to make disputes personal and, ultimately, permanent.

In San Francisco he hinted that quarterback Jeff Garcia was gay. In Philly he labeled Donovan McNabb a quitter. Asked recently in an HBO interview if being the common denominator in the quarrels was merely a coincidence, T.O. responded smugly, "Could be. Why couldn't it be?"

He's famous for yelling "I love me some ME!" on the sidelines and talking trash that would make Mel Gibson blush. He's hyper-sensitive but doesn't give a damn or a second thought to what he says about others. He can be a self-aggrandizing, money-grubbing anthrax, though in the mirror seeing nothing but pure powdered sugar.

T.O. --a book he claims misquotes him despite "writing" on page two, "These are my words, straight from me to you"--is 242 pages and $21 of "it wasn't me." Last season with the Eagles, Team Obliterator skipped a minicamp, wouldn't shake hands with head coach Andy Reid, failed to show up at two mandatory autograph sessions, slept through a team meeting, parked in coaches' and handicapped spaces and repeatedly violated the team dress code.

Oh yeah, and then had the nerve to publicly blast the organization for not sufficiently celebrating his 100th career touchdown.

Owens claims he's misunderstood and vilified and that those nasty labels he'll never be able to peel off are merely a manifestation of a sinister media conspiracy that he cannot explain.

"Those who really take some time to get to know me," Owens says to the daily mob surrounding him after a practice, "find out I'm just a normal, cool dude."

Not that he cared, but his arrival in Dallas wasn't the smoothest. He immediately alienated some fans by showing up to a Mavericks NBA Finals game in a Heat jersey and then appearing dreadfully late to his own youth football camps in North Richland Hills and Duncanville.

His debut at training camp, while on-time, also generated trepidation. Carefully, we approach the beast after Dallas' first practice. And the second. And the third. And the fourth. And you know what? While talking to T.O. our ears didn't start bleeding and our watches didn't stop working and our manhood wasn't challenged.