Week 3 and already a lot of interesting story lines. Time to dive in…

Owens Tries Suicide

Reading about this story this morning did not surprise me. I knew this was coming. I knew Owens was a troubled individual. He exhibits signs of serious mental problems, and I wrote about that almost a year ago:

Terrell Owens has classic signs of a person in need of help. Mental help. He desperately needs to see a therapist and get to the root of his problems. He needs someone who can guide him and put him on the path to mental health. And unfortunatley, it doesn’t appear that anyone close to him is willing to tell him that.

I’m mostly disappointed in the sports media for not addressing this angle of the story. Even today they aren’t addressing it. I listend to Colin Cowherd’s show on the way to work this morning and he was saying that more than 50% of the people calling or e-mailing the show think T.O’s. suicide attempt was a publicity stunt.

This is not a publicity stunt people. Don’t be morons.

Terrell Owens has serious psychiatric problems. He has a mental health issue and he needs professional help. This was a cry for help. I just hope that he gets it. I hope that the national media quits spinning this as a non-mental-health story and starts addressing it as what it is. Mental illness is real and T.O. needs help.

The Madden Curse Is Alive!

I don’t believe in curses, but if you do then you would be one of the people who was not surprised when it was announced that Shaun Alexander has a broken foot. It’s a small break - a hairline fracture that optimistic persons are saying may only cost the reigning MVP two weeks - but it’s enough of a break to qualify for the Madden Curse.

What will be interesting to watch now is, do future NFL stars begin to take the curse seriously, and will we see anyone decline the cover of Madden 2008 for fear of the curse? My guess is yes, since many atheletes are superstitious. I think it would be really funny if someone like LaDanian Tomlinson comes out next year after being offer the Madden cover and publicly says something like, “Hey, I’m not doing the Madden cover. Sorry, but the curse worries me and I need to be healthy for my team.” Then some hotrod like Chad Johnson will take the cover and subsequently break his leg.

As for Seattle, I don’t think this hurts them terribly. They’ve been getting by without much production from the running game. Morrice Morris will give them some yards, probably enough to keep defenses honest. Seattle just needs to survive this. That’s part of the NFL: surviving injuries. The Steelers did it last season, losing Big Ben for a few games midway through the year, and Seattle survived the losses of Darrell Jackson and Bobby Engram. Both teams eventually got healthy and ended up in the Super Bowl. As long as Alexander’s injury doesn’t linger into a two month ordeal, the ‘Hawks should be able to weather this storm.

Is Carson Palmer’s Return Miraculous, Or Was It hGH?

Here’s something no one is talking about, but after the Floyd Landis scandal at this year’s Tour De France, you’d think they would be. If you will recall, Landis was the American cyclist who made a “miraculous” charge on the second-to-last day of the event, eliminating an 8-minute deficit that he had created the previous day. At the time, people said it was the single greatest comeback anyone had ever witnessed in the cycling world, and maybe in all of sports.

Then the allegations of doping came, with Landis’ “A” sample testing positive for high levels of testosterone. Later, he “B” sample also tested positive, and everyone in the sports world realized that Landis had cheated his way to victory.

Sports reporters looked at the event with their perfect 20/20 hindsight glasses and proclaimed that we all should have known better, that such a miraculous come-from-behind victory had to be tainted in some way.

Yet here we are, only a few months later, lauding the miraculous recover that Carson Palmer has made from a devastating knee injury. Everyone - and I mean everyone - says this sort of injury requires a 16-month recovery and rehabilitation period. Yet all anyone can talk about is how miraculous Palmer’s recover has been at a little over seven months.

Does anyone in their right mind believe that Carson Palmer reduced his recovery time by over 50% without the aid of an undetectable medical agent like Human Growth Hormone? How come no one is asking this question?

I’ll tell you why: because no one wants to even consider the most logical and reasonable answer. That Palmer used hGH to speed his recovery. And in our current climate in regards to steriods, the press would have a field day with it, and that would destroy not only Palmer’s reputation, but the NFL’s as well.

But here’s what I think. First, I do think Palmer used hGH to speed his recovery because it is the only thing that makes logical sense.

Second, I say good for him.

Fans want to see their players on the field playing the games. We especially want to see our superstars on the field, not in training facilities nursing broken and injured body parts. The best athelets playing at the highest level - that’s what we pay to see. That’s what we want to see.

I am not for cheating of any kind, especially steriod use, because it gives atheletes who cheat an unfair advantage over atheletes who choose to play by the rules. Plus, more importantly, there can be health problems.

But an athelete speeding recovery from a devastating injury, under the supervision of a medical professional, I do not consider cheating. Injuries are a part of the NFL, moreso that any other sport in the world, due to the violent nature of the game. It makes absolutely no sense to me not to take advantage of medical science in a prescribed and medically accepted way to speed the recover of these atheletes. Playing the game is their job. If you or I were injured in a way that prevented us from doing our job, our employers would have no problems with whatever medical advice and medicines were deemed necessary to speed our recovery and get us back to work.

The NFL, and all major league sports, need to take a different approach in regards to substances like hGH. They need to blood test for this stuff, to make sure players aren’t using it while healthy and thus cheating during the season, but also to allow them to use these substances at the behest of medical personnel to assist in the recovery from injury.

Get the injured players back on the field. If medical personnel say it’s ok, then it should be. Regulate the usage of this stuff, don’t just ban in outright.

Of course this will never become reality because it makes too much sense.