You already know my good brother T.O. — but not like this.
The legendary, Hall of Fame wide receiver Terrell Owens needs no introduction. He’s a six-time Pro Bowler who was also named All-Pro five times throughout his 15 years within the National Football League.
Plus, since retiring greater than a decade ago, the mighty T.O. has parlayed his astronomical success into savvy entrepreneurship, with what he teased as a classy LA breakfast spot and a project with Amazon on the horizon.
But growing up in Alexander City, Alabama, Terrell never once thought he could possibly be considered one of those busts in the road of greats memorialized in that Canton, Ohio, museum, he told me on this week’s “Renaissance Man.”
Actually, T.O., known for his energy and celebrations in the professionals, didn’t imagine he was going anywhere major as a child.
“I wasn’t an amazing athlete after I grew up and after I got here out of highschool even,” he told me. “I didn’t think I used to be an amazing athlete coming out of faculty. I never knew that I used to be going to eventually change into a Hall of Famer. That was never really on my radar.”
Adolescence was a confusing time for the budding athlete. Terrell was raised mostly by his mom and grandmother and, until those years, he didn’t realize that his father had been living across the road with one other family.
Terrell was quick to confess that his home life affected his early playing days in psychological ways.
“My mom didn’t really know that I used to be going to change into the athlete that I could,” T.O. said. “She didn’t come to games.”
That’s to not say that Terrell’s mom, and grandma for that matter, didn’t love him to death.
Actually, they ensured he stayed on the straight and narrow. T.O. says that’s an enormous reason for his winning mindset — and successful avoidance of harmful habits — once he got to the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and commenced playing at a better level.
“I just felt and thought and saw how smoking, drinking, all of that affects your ability,” the soon-to-be 49er said. “For me, I already knew I didn’t have the best ability anyway.”
While T.O. could have doubted himself throughout highschool and even the beginning of faculty, things all modified sophomore yr. He broke out against then-powerhouse and up to date national champions Marshall University on what he described as an ideal night for football.
“I remember it prefer it was yesterday,” T.O. said. “We beat them 33 to 31. I had all 4 touchdowns. That will be emergence, I suppose, of my greatness, or into, you already know, the stages of fine to great. But again, at the moment, I still had no concept that I had the flexibility to play at the following level.”
But that day got here a number of short years later in 1996, when San Fran drafted the fast man as a third-rounder. To at the present time, T.O. says he was a “science project” for a way teams recruit and pick wideouts in modern-day NFL.
Playing under the shadow of 49er great Jerry Rice, Super Bowl champ and a fellow Hall of Famer, quickly turned to shine on Terrell’s own illustrious profession.
“He was No. 1 — I began to think about myself No. 1-A,” T.O. said. “It wasn’t 2.”
Soon enough, T.O. was the one who defenses were designing double coverage for as he raked in touchdown after touchdown.
“Within the passing of the torch … me attempting to fill some very big shoes that Jerry Rice had [filled] for thus a few years,” the younger great said, “that was the emergence of my skill set, my talent … who I became.”
Fast forward a spell, and after T.O. was traded to the City of Brotherly Love, it was looking like he’d have a likelihood to play in his first ever Super Bowl.
But seven weeks before the large game, in late 2004, as Philly was making its mean playoff push, Terrell caught a fully terrible break against his future Dallas Cowboys squad — literally.
“I tore the ligaments in my ankle,” he said. “The subsequent day after the sport, I came upon I had broken my fibula.”
But even that couldn’t keep Owens down. He successfully rehabbed the excruciating injury in time to battle — yet ultimately fall short to — Tom Brady’s Patriots in Super Bowl XXXIX.
Most athletes would have needed about half a yr to properly recoup. And Eagles trainers had their fears.
“I’m going to be around so many violent guys, [the training staff] wouldn’t medically clear me to play,” Terrell said. “So I needed to sign a waiver declaring myself [able] to play within the Super Bowl.”
T.O. did so at the chance of becoming a liability to his own contract — purely for love of the sport.
It’s moments like that that get you enshrined without end.
That’s a part of the rationale why Owens just went out to the University of Colorado to motivate “Coach Prime” Deion Sanders’ Pac-12 squad.
Jersey No. 81 is passing along his three D’s: desire, dedication and discipline — all of which he has shown on the way in which up from a self-doubting high schooler to a legend of the sport.
“As I grew up, I desired to separate myself. Elevation requires separation. I knew that I needed to do something different so as to get on those levels,” T.O. said.
“There’s great, after which there’s the extent of greatness [even above most] athletes,” he added. “For myself, I’m proud to say that I’ve been spoken [about like] a few of those people of greatness.”
Detroit native Jalen Rose is a member of the University of Michigan’s iconoclastic Fab Five, who shook up the school hoops world within the early ’90s. He played 13 seasons within the NBA before transitioning right into a media personality. Rose executive-produced “The Fab Five” for ESPN’s “30 for 30” series, is the writer of the best-selling book “Got To Give the People What They Want,” a fashion tastemaker and co-founded the Jalen Rose Leadership Academy, a public charter school in his hometown.
