Remember the time when Chad Johnson and Terrell Owens were two of the best players in the NFL? They caught touchdowns at will and capped off their great plays with memorable touchdown celebrations that were loved by fans across the country. Fast-forward a few years. Both former stars have fallen from glory, moving from team to team in an attempt to return to their old form. It appears that the careers of both these players have ended for good during training camps this summer. Owens, or “T.O.” was cut by Seattle rather more quietly than I expected, while Johnson, Cincinnati’s former all-pro wide receiver, was cut on camera by Miami following his arrest for head-butting his wife. While we can laugh, cry, or sigh about where these players are now, there are also lessons that everyone, especially athletes, can learn from them.
WCA athletes don’t exactly play sports for millions of dollars (if we did that would be extremely illegal). However, we can still learn from their mistakes. Turning against teammates or purposely drawing attention to yourself over your teammates will never make your team better or help drive it to a championship. On the contrary, it will cause teammates to turn against each other and make them focus on fighting each other instead of focusing on winning. Teamwork is paramount in team sports, especially in football. Any teammate who causes infighting within a team, and thus hinders the team’s chances of winning, must be dealt with harshly.
Both of these players fell victim to their own selfishness. One obvious example of this is Owens’ problems with his quarterbacks. When T.O. was with San Francisco, he insinuated that his quarterback, Jeff Garcia, is a homosexual. During his stint with Philadelphia a few years later, he implied in an interview that Brett Favre, Green Bay’s star quarterback, was better than Donovan McNabb, who was Philadelphia’s quarterback at the time. This incident pretty much spelled the end of T.O.’s career in Philadelphia. And no matter what team that he was on, T.O.’s would always complain if he wasn’t getting the ball. As T.O.’s playing skills declined, teams understandably became unwilling to take on the baggage that came with signing him.
T.O. placed more importance on himself and his performance then that of his team. While his talent and even his work ethic are second to none, his selfishness derailed his career and the Super Bowl hopes of his teammates. Remember, the only Super Bowl that either T.O. or Chad Johnson participated in was in Super Bowl XXXIX (39), when T.O.’s Philadelphia Eagles lost 24-21 to the Patriots.
Chad Johnson fell victim to a different kind of selfishness. He did not really have the tendency to rip his teammates the way that T.O. did. Instead, he shamelessly promoted himself through attention-getting touchdown celebrations and other shenanigans. Don’t get me wrong, I loved some of those celebrations. However, he took it over the top when he began celebrations that he knew would result in large fines and unsportsmanlike conduct penalties that would hurt his team. Other over-the-top shenanigans included his name change to “Chad Ochocinco,” which in Spanish translates to “eight-five.”
This over-the-top attention seeking is another thing that hurts teams. As I mentioned before, team sports, by definition, require each player to put the interests of his team before his own interests. This means not drawing more attention to himself than to his teammates. Johnson definitely drew more attention to himself than to his teammates and did so in a very selfish manner. Johnson’s selfishness was definitely one of the factors in Cincinnati’s year-to-year inconsistency throughout the 2000’s.
While T.O. and Johnson/Ochocino reap the rewards of their selfishness, there is hopefully a new standard of unselfishness at the wide receiver position in today’s NFL. Detroit’s Calvin Johnson is arguably one of the best players in football, and not a peep is heard from him in the same way as T.O. and Chad Johnson. He cannot help but draw attention to himself on the football field because of what a great football player he is. However, he does not celebrate touchdowns selfishly and never acts up off the field, but instead works hard in season and out. He is a model of what an athlete should be. If more athletes could be like Calvin Johnson, more teams could benefit from having great athletes play without the extra baggage. This would turn the focus of coaches and players from trying to control their teammate to trying to win games, which is where the focus should be.
