If you’re still unsure whether there’s enough room in one huddle for Ochocinco and Terrell Owens, let me spell it out for you: it doesn’t matter. Neither one of them seems particularly worried about football (see Batmobile photo shoot). The new question is “can 1 half-hour TV show fit both of their personalities?” That much we’ll find out soon enough, as a preview of their upcoming joint broadcasting effort will air tonight on Versus.
“The show, billed as the first-ever weekly national talk show featuring active NFL players, will be previewed Tuesday night and run for the next five weeks on Tuesday nights with Owens and Ochocinco doing segments in Versus’ The Daily Line show (11 ET). On Oct. 12, The T.OchoShow debuts as a stand-alone, to follow Versus’ NHL games starting at 10:30 p.m. ET.”
There’s probably something to the idea of a sports talk show hosted by active players, and I have to say I like this format MUCH better than two individual, relatively useless reality shows. At this point, I’m pretty familiar with the concept of celebrity-athlete. In fact I’m pretty sick of it. I get that Chad bangs scores of women in the offseason, I don’t really need to see it on VH1 to understand that. What makes him interesting is the things that the other guys don’t do: like tweet-up with fans to play Call of Duty, take them out to dinner after a game, or to “act a donkey at the mall” on a shopping spree.
T.O. should definitely pay attention. After he began to stand out as the league’s premier TD celebration-choreographer he was outshined by #85, who was, to put it simply, infinitely more likable. Hell, the guy CHANGED HIS NAME TO HIS NUMBER IN SPANISH in honor of Spanish Heritage Month/general silliness. I’m hoping that in their time together, Chad can teach Owens that expanding his brand beyond the football field doesn’t have to mean playing the villain all the time; that you can use your powers for good instead of evil. I just hope that the publicity-arms race they started in 2005 doesn’t escalate too quickly now that they’re sharing a common spotlight. Eventually one of them will have to throw down the trump card and we’ll wind up with a sex tape on our hands, but for now, thankfully, they’re still focused on sports (for the most part).
Ochocinco says the show will focus on football but might also touch on “baseball and hockey. With my love of soccer, I’ll throw that in. And porn. I’m doing amateur porn, so I’ll throw that in. … Do you understand how dangerous this is for us to have a stage like this?”
Yikes.
Follow Mike on Twitter @mickeyvee and read his ramblings on other topics at Wannabe Genius.
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