It's Time for T.O. to G.O.

Enough already. This has gotten beyond ridiculous. Even more so than during those awful Chan Gailey years, the Dallas Cowboys have to be considered the biggest joke in the National Football League. Even the Detroit Lions have to be thanking all things holy that they don't have to deal with the poppycock that has become Terrell Owens and the rest of America's Team. Consider this scroll on ESPN: "Sources report that Terrell Owens and Jason Witten got in a verbal argument after Witten tried to engage Owens during practice. Owens told him to get away and called him a name." Called him a name? Seriously? After teammates separated the two, Owens also announced that Witten was no longer invited to his birthday party, and then removed him from his list of friends on Facebook. Apparently, Owens thinks that Witten and Tony Romo hold private meetings and design plays without including him. Other reports have suggested that the defensive players agree that Romo relies too heavily on Witten. Quick question: how can you OVER rely on one of the ten best players in football? (Note: Owens is not one of the 10 best.) Moreover, looking at the numbers from this year, Romo has thrown more passes to Owens than anybody else on the team; however, Owens has one of the worst reception percentages in the league--he only catches 52 percent of the balls thrown to him. The only aspect of football about which Owens cares is his own stats; they are, by his standards, so bad this year because of him--because he doesn't catch the football. Does Owens care about winning? Maybe, but not nearly as much as he does about being considered, statistically, the best receiver of all-time. Since his arrival in Dallas, this writer has been a defender of Owens and his antics because of his skills and the fact that his shenanigans don't land him in prison like so many other players. No longer, though. Owens has gone beyond being a productive brat. His is no longer consistently an elite playmaker, and he is destroying the Cowboys. On the eve of their first absolute "must-win" game of the season, Owens is not trying to help his team win. He is creating a divide in the locker room so wide even Wade Phillips could fall in and not get stuck. The New York Giants already decimated Dallas once this year, and they now have the opportunity to effectively end the Cowboys' season for the second straight year. When you go against the best team in football, you need a concentrated effort from every man on the roster. Owens has made sure that that will be impossible Sunday night. The team is unavoidably divided now: each player must visibly decide whether he's an "Owens guy" or a "Witten guy." Problem is, if trying to be one of those, then you're not trying to be a Cowboy. Knute Rockne once said, "I don't play my 11 best; I play my best 11." He understood that having the best team is what wins championships. Clearly, the Cowboys do not. For if they did, Jerry Jones--not Phillips or Jason Garrett because they clearly have no control over the players--should suspend Owens indefinietly. He won't, because he's a fool, and it is previous indulgences of Owens that have created this mess. At every stop in his career, Owens has caused drama and rifts between his teammates. When you consider the hundreds of different people that have interacted with him during his other troubles, you realize that he is the only common denominator in each situation. Hey, Terrell, maybe YOU are the problem. If, as Owens claims, he was such a stand-up, team-first guy, none of this would be public. Now, this is not to say that Owens shouldn't be able to complain if he's unhappy. But, if he truly cared about the "team," he wouldn't have made all of this public, especially at this point in the season. If Dallas had a true team and true leadership--NOT Jones and Phillips--all of this would be discussed and handled privately. Then, perhaps, the Cowboys would have some chance against New York on Sunday night. Instead, though, every man on that Dallas sideline will be keeping one eye on the game and the other on the rest of his alleged teammates to see when the next fight will break out. Even without MVP candidate Brandon Jacobs, the Giants are going to annihilate the Cowboys. Now that Owens has gone from annoying prima donna to a plague on this team, he must be removed. Deactivate him, release him--do anything but allow him to come to Texas Stadium and further infect this team. It is too late to save this season, and, undoubtedly, he has contaminated some other players who will have to follow him out the door in the off-season. However, if Jones wants to open his billion-dollar playhouse with lots of wins next year, he cannot wait to start healing his franchise for next year. Owens has to be gone in order to fix this team. He, Romo, and Witten can never again have the type of relationships necessary to create unity with the other 50 men on the roster. His actions are no longer worth the modest stats he posts. The best way to argue for more opportunities is to take advantage of the ones you get, not catch only half the passes thrown to you. Jerry has let Owens become a bigger embarrassment than Michael Vick ever was to the Atlanta Falcons because Jones has been complicit in creating this current mess. If Jones, Phillips, or Garrett, or the rest of the team, had stood up to Owens before, maybe he would've thought twice before instigating the end for Dallas. Then again, probably not. It's T.O. New York 45, Dallas 9 Brian Smith can be reached at BLSmith@mail.utexas.edu