What is all this nonsense going back and forth between Terrell Owens and Keyshawn Johnson? Isn't global warming accelerating fast enough without these two nitwits expelling even more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere?

It all began a week ago on one of ESPN's fifteen NFL shows, when Keyshawn made a remark about how Bill Parcells deserves the credit for putting together the Dallas Cowboys team that this year has gone 12-1. Oh, by the way - Parcells happened to be sitting in the same studio with Keyshawn at the time. Maybe The Fat Tuna has pictures of Keyshawn in some kind of compromising position. Or maybe Keyshawn is just bitter that the Cowboys got good after he and Parcells were dumped. Whatever the motivation behind the remarks, they were not received kindly by certain people on the Cowboys, particularly Terrell Owens, who has been openly critical of the departed Parcells in recent months, even going so far as to say that Parcells's system held back the team. Owens said to reporters in response to Keyshawn:

I'm probably the reason he's in the booth now. He's going to be a hater and throw me under the bus because he has to defend Bill. He won a Super Bowl and all, but you'd have to check the roster to know he was even on the team.

We came out in the same year. He was a first-rounder and I was a third. Go compare our stats. He couldn't come down here now and be a third or fourth receiver on this team. Just compare our stats.

Owens is way off-base with that line about having to check the roster to even know Keyshawn was on the team. Keyshawn had a good season with Tampa the year they won the Super Bowl - 76 catches for 1088 yards and 5 TDs. And he had 6 catches for 69 in the Super Bowl itself. Not that I expect Terrell Owens to be accurate when he attacks someone. Basically, the truth is whatever T.O. says it is, facts be damned.

The real issue here is how insecure T.O. is, and how easy it obviously is to get him worked up. He talks about how his career has been better than Keyshawn's - true enough. So, why not let one's accomplishments speak for themselves? Because that doesn't draw as many microphones in the locker room.

Terrell continued:

Those guys [at ESPN] are probably talking about me, chopping it up, drinking coffee. They can have their little pity party and talk about me all day long. It doesn't bother me. There's a lot of people on the ESPN panel and across the country that has observed what has happened this year versus last year. And there's a lot of people that just don't want to give credit for what Wade has done and what wasn't done last year. That's it. I'm not trying to be negative.

Does anyone even know what this guy is talking about? The only thing I was able to pick out of there is that he's trying to defend Wade Phillips - or, actually, that he's trying to disguise his self-serving little tirade as a defense of Phillips. What a transparent little dweeb Terrell Owens is. As if he wouldn't throw his buddy Wade under the bus in a heartbeat if it suited him.

Yeah, things are going great in Dallas right now - the team's on a roll, and T.O. is having a fabulous season. But at some point the roll is going to come to an end, and then what will happen? The same thing that happened in San Francisco and Philly when Terrell suddenly wasn't happy - Terrell blaming people right and left, stabbing people in the back, calling people out, accusing people of all manner of things, even questioning their sexuality and/or manhood. Everyone knows what Terrell is about, especially Bill Parcells and Keyshawn Johnson. And everyone also knows what Keyshawn is about. He likes the spotlight as much as Terrell, and is just as smug and insufferable as Terrell ever was.

The happiest people about all this are, of course, the ESPN folks, who get to play up the little feud between the two smack-talking wide receivers. No doubt they are encouraging Keyshawn to keep pouring it on, and no doubt Keyshawn will keep doing so. ESPN likes these "controversial" guys and the publicity they drum up - just as long as they don't say anything too edgy, like when Rush Limbaugh made his idiot remarks about Donovan McNabb, and sent the hypocrites at Bristol scurrying for their damage control manuals. In the end, Keyshawn doesn't have a lot to offer beyond his ability to stir up animosity. His analytical insights are worthless and his television presence negligible. He doesn't even rise to the level of a Michael Irvin, who was a major league richard, but was at least occasionally entertaining. It would be nice to see Terrell Owens demonstrate his savvy by rising above the whole thing, but of course he won't. He'll go along with it because it brings attention to him. And who knows - maybe when Terrell retires, ESPN will want to bring him in too. He couldn't be any worse than Emmitt Smith.