Halfway through the football season, one thing has become quite clear: Terrell Owens and the city of Philadelphia were made for each other.

9 out of 10 times, that sentence would be followed by a lengthy diatribe about how a city like Philadelphia, with its classless sports fans, is deserving of T.O.'s piss poor attitude. But sass-a-thon.com is not a part of the national media that aims to constantly create, tear down, and recreate heroes and villains in an effort to perpetuate the good vs evil view of sports so they can sell papers.

I’ve long been of the opinion that Philadelphia is a city that is misunderstood. It has its shortcomings, of course, but it gets a bad rap as far as its attitude goes.*

Much like T.O.

The one thing I learned in my 18 years in Philadelphia, aside from my truck driver vocabulary and penchant for neon orange cheese in a jar, is that you'd be hard-pressed to find another city full of such devoted, passionate, hardcore fans. Sure, Philadelphians are pessimistic. Sure, we're bitter. Sure, we complain. A lot. But we're nowhere near as brutal as they say we are.

It's no secret that the city of Philadelphia has a reputation of being a nasty sports city. You've heard it all before: we threw snowballs at Santa, threw batteries at JD Drew, booed Kobe Bryant, cheered Michael Irvin's concussion, and so on. But 95% of those stories have changed a bit with each telling, and today they in no way resemble the true stories they once were.

Thanks to hundreds of media members, starting with Howard Kosell, the snowball incident has been exaggerated time and time again. In reality, the snowball fight between the fans and Santa was meant to be fun, and even the guy who wore the Santa suit that fateful day has stated that he "thought it was funny." 35 years later, the incident is still brought up to tar and feather a city that was just trying to have a little bit of fun at a football game. Imagine that.

Somehow, the two batteries that were thrown at JD Drew in the summer of 1999 became thousands of batteries once newspaper deadlines had been met. Two batteries. Two idiots. That's all it was.

Sure, Kobe Bryant got booed at the NBA All Star game in Philly a few years back. But this one I won't deny. No, this one we're proud of. Philadelphia is a blue-collar town. We like our athletes tough, gritty and hard working. We don't like a guy who wears sunglasses inside his high school gym during the press conference he called to announce he is entering the draft. We don't like a guy who says, during the 2001 finals against the Sixers, "Going home means nothing to me. It's just basketball, and we want to tear those fans' hearts out." One thing about Philadelphians - we are loyal and we are vindictive. We can criticize ourselves. But you better not even think about it.


Terrell Owens has the reputation of a bad boy, a clubhouse cancer, a selfish player, a troublemaker. While I'm not fond of his speaking out about his former QB's sexual preference, I've recently come to realize that the guy isn't half as bad as the media makes him out to be.

Some say T.O. is selfish, that he's always asking for the ball. This isn't basketball, and the consequences aren't the same. I want a guy on my team who wants the QB throwing to him every down. That means he thinks he can make the plays, and when is the last time confidence and a hunger for the game hurt a team?

Some say T.O. is hard to get along with, a bad teammate that disrupts games and practices. Why, then, are he and McNabb neighbors and best friends? Why, then, are there only reports of a very happy locker room? Why, then, are the Eagles 8-1?

And then there's the recent Ray Lewis incident. Against the Ravens, after yet another touchdown, Owens imitated a Ray Lewis celebration dance in the end zone, much to the chagrin of Lewis and, as it turns out, players around the league. He received loads of emails from fans and players criticizing him for mocking Lewis. Did Lewis have this trademarked in the offseason? I apparently didn't get that memo. This is a league in which players can return from being accused of rape, murder, drug possession, and spousal abuse and still be embraced by the league and the fans. Here's a guy excelling at a sport he loves, and having fun doing it, and he's being treated like a criminal.

T.O. has said it, and Shannon Sharpe before him. If you don't want him to make you look bad in the end zone, don't let him get there.

So far, no one has been able to stop him.

And no one in Philadelphia is complaining.

For once.

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* Thank you to the city of Detroit for proving tonight that Philadelphia is far from the most evil sports city in the country. But, more on that tomorrow.