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T.O. may play, but he's upset about former fiancée
Terrell Owens was planning to marry Felisha Terrell, but they recently ended their relationship.
Terrell Owens' broken right hand is healing, to the point where it looks like the Cowboys receiver may play in Sunday's game against the Tennessee Titans in Nashville. But three days after his trip to the Baylor University Medical Center emergency room -- an incident first reported as a suicide attempt but since classified as an accidental overdose by the Dallas police -- Owens' mind still isn't right.
While acknowledging that he has felt the support of numerous people close to him since being released from the hospital Wednesday morning, Owens told SI.com on Friday that he is hurt by his former fiancée's failure to contact or visit him over the past few days.
"Her not reaching out to me really hit home," Owens said Friday in his first public comments since the nationally televised press conference he conducted from the Cowboys' training facility Wednesday afternoon. "You can tell someone you love them all day long, but for her to not even show up, after all the years we've spent together -- that's not love. It hurts. But I'm glad I know."
Without identifying his longtime girlfriend by name, Owens indicated that she is the same woman referenced in Wednesday's Dallas Morning News, which quoted his longtime trainer, James "Buddy" Primm. According to Primm, a woman to whom Owens was engaged ended their relationship on Monday, one of two traumatic events that created a "perfect storm" of emotional devastation on his part. (Primm also told the Morning News that Owens was upset over not having been able to be with his son -- from a previous relationship -- on the boy's seventh birthday Monday.)
"We've been broken up for a while," Owens clarified Friday, "but we've been trying to work it out. Now I know where we stand, though."
The woman -- believed to be Felisha Terrell, whom Owens, in a July 24 Sports Illustrated story, said he had met in July 2004 and hoped to marry in the coming year -- could not be reached for comment.
Owens, speaking to SI.com in a nearly deserted locker room at the close of Friday's media-access period, said he has been heartened by the responses of many people close to him, some of whom immediately traveled to Dallas upon learning of his hospitalization. He said former San Francisco 49ers practice-squad receiver Jimmy Farris, who now lives in Atlanta (he played for the Falcons from 2002 to '04), "flew down right away and has been staying at my house. My cousin flew down, and so did my pastor. And another friend flew in from San Jose -- she was on her way to New York [on Tuesday], but she said God told her to come see me instead."
That friend, said Owens, "was with me Thursday night, and I was telling her about what I was going through and how certain people weren't there for me. She said something that really put it best: 'We can all say we love somebody, but there's a difference between superficial love and godly love.' God is going to be there no matter what you do. That's what I would have expected from my friend [and former fiancée], to be there, and the fact that she wasn't tells me all I need to know. It's really disappointing."
Owens, who exchanged text messages with ex-Niners teammate Derrick Deese while sitting at his locker Friday, said the events of the past week "made me realize what people really, really care about. There have been a lot of people reaching out, and some who haven't."
He reiterated his assertion, made in Wednesday's press conference, that he had not attempted suicide, stating, "It's ridiculous how people can take something and blow it out of proportion."
As to whether he would play against the Titans, Owens responded, "Ask Bill," a reference to Cowboys coach Bill Parcells. A few minutes later, in his media session with reporters, Parcells said he expected Owens to travel to Nashville but had not made a final decision on whether the receiver -- who was injured two Sundays ago in a victory over the Washington Redskins -- would be active for the game. One Cowboys starter said he believed Owens would be in the lineup on Sunday.
Source: SI.com
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