Terrell Owens
The Sharpie in the sock, the pose on the Dallas star, the sit-ups in the driveway while the cameras rolled. T.O. was one of the best receivers in football for most of a decade and the most entertaining press conference in sports, often at the same time.
Terrell Owens was born in Alexander City, Alabama, in 1973 and raised by his mother and grandmother, who would not let him play sports until high school. Out of Tennessee–Chattanooga, a small school where NFL scouts rarely looked, San Francisco took him in the third round in 1996, 89th overall, onto a roster led by the receiver he had grown up idolizing, Jerry Rice. When Rice tore his ACL in 1997, Owens took his spot. In January 1999 he dropped pass after pass against Green Bay and then caught the game-winning touchdown for a 30–27 playoff win, and on December 17, 2000, he caught 20 passes for 283 yards against the Bears, breaking a record that had stood for fifty years.
The theater started that same fall. On September 24, 2000, in Dallas, he scored and sprinted to midfield to pose on the Cowboys' star; when he did it a second time, safety George Teague flattened him, Teague was ejected, and Owens's own coach suspended him for a week. On Monday Night Football in October 2002 he scored against Seattle, pulled a Sharpie from his sock, autographed the ball, and handed it to his financial adviser; the league promptly banned "foreign objects" on the field.
A botched 2004 trade to Baltimore ended with Owens in Philadelphia on a seven-year, $49 million deal, and the Eagles' season became a soap opera: the Desperate Housewives towel skit that opened a Monday night game, a horse-collar tackle in December that broke his fibula, and then nine catches for 122 yards in Super Bowl XXXIX seven weeks later, against his doctors' advice. "For me, they said I was selfish," he said afterward, comparing the coverage to what Brett Favre would have gotten. The next summer, sent home from training camp for a week after a shouting match with Andy Reid, he held court for reporters in the driveway of his Moorestown, New Jersey, home on August 10, 2005, shirtless and doing sit-ups: "Hey, if I AM going to get back on the field, I gotta make sure I'm in shape." Philadelphia suspended him that November and deactivated him for the rest of the season.
Dallas signed him in March 2006. He led the league with 13 touchdown catches that year, dropped a Thanksgiving touchdown ball into a Salvation Army kettle ("That was my donation. I hope it's worth as much as the fine"), mocked Belichick's spying scandal with a camera-to-the-face celebration that cost him $7,500, and after a 21–17 playoff loss to the Giants in January 2008 wept in defense of Tony Romo: "That's my teammate. That's my quarterback." Dallas released him in March 2009. He finished with the third-most receiving yards and touchdowns in NFL history, six Pro Bowls, and a 2018 Hall of Fame induction.
Similar items
New England Patriots Dynasty
A sixth-round quarterback who started the year as a backup, a coach who asked to introduce his team all at once, and three Lombardi Trophies in four years. Every AFC fan's villain for two decades pulled the biggest Super Bowl upset since Super Bowl III.
Madden NFL
Every August a new Madden, and every year the same arguments: the rosters, the ratings, the cover, the curse. EA's football series started as "Trip's Folly" in 1988, became an annual release in 1990, and in the 2000s turned into a calendar event, complete with a tournament on Super Bowl weekend and a reality show about finding the best player in America.
Jessica Simpson
The third lane of the late-90s teen-pop trinity—Britney, Christina, and Jessica Simpson, marketed above all on that big Texas church-choir voice. Her debut album was a platinum hit, but her real dominance came via a reality TV show that turned her marriage into ratings gold and a Chicken of the Sea moment into the decade's defining soundbite.
NFL Street
Seven-on-seven football with no penalties, no injuries, and no uniforms — just NFL players in street clothes talking trash on a concrete lot. Taunt the defense while you run and you fill the Gamebreaker meter. EA Sports BIG's 2004 answer to the question of what football looks like with all the rules taken out.