Terrell Owens: Skip Bayless ‘targeted me’ because I didn’t act ‘the way a Black athlete was supposed to’

Among the long list of so-called “diva” NFL wide receivers, Terrell Owens is perhaps the most infamous.

The Hall of Fame former San Francisco, Philadelphia, and Dallas star had nearly as many controversies during his time in the league as highlight grabs. Coupled with his off-field entertainment career, Owens’ supposed conflicts with teammates and coaches became ingrained in his legacy by the time he retired in 2010.

Owens, however, has mostly kept a low profile since hanging up his cleats. Recently, he resurfaced with a new podcast under Michael Strahan’s network umbrella and has had a chance to correct the record on his career.

In a recent interview with Max Kellerman on the Game Over podcast, Owens said he believes his reputation as a negative presence in the locker room began with Skip Bayless. According to Owens, Bayless “targeted” him during his early years in San Francisco because he didn’t handle himself “the way a Black athlete was supposed to act.”

Owens added that Bayless’ commentary, which included a typically childish nickname for the star receiver, opened the door for the rest of the media to pile on and portray him as selfish and unreasonable.

“I was a target, and I guess he almost kind of made his name off really targeting me,” Owens said. “And then I guess I didn’t act a certain way or, I guess, the way a Black athlete was supposed to act.

“Speaking of touchdown celebrations, me being open and me just standing on business and just being outspoken, which I didn’t think was a bad thing. I was honest. Not really outspoken, but I was honest. You ask me something, a press conference or whatever, based on what happened in the game, I was always honest about what I thought happened.

“I didn’t understand at that time — I was young — I didn’t understand the word, or politically speaking, being politically correct. What you wanted to know, I was going to give it to you. Not really thinking how to process my answers and understand that if I answered a certain way that this may then put another teammate or somebody else in harm’s way. Which is called ‘throwing somebody else under the bus.’ That wasn’t what I was always doing.”

Owens also took issue with Bayless creating the “Team Obliterator” moniker, arguing that he changed teams often in order to give himself a better chance to make money or improve his legacy after coming up from humble means and not being a top recruit.

“Everything I did, I did for my family,” Owens said. “And then you look back on my career and how people perceived me and portrayed me, it’s all based on the media’s narrative, and how they pushed that I was arrogant, I was cocky. Skip Bayless has people looking at me, calling me ‘Team Obliterator.’ That I destroyed locker rooms.”

While Owens’ story doesn’t exactly line up with Bayless’ career, as Bayless had already gotten to ESPN by the time he really homed in on Owens, the Hall of Famer noted that Bayless gave other commentators an opening to parrot the same generalizations about him.

“Whether it was ESPN, NFL Network, they piggy-backed on that. Your Mark Schlereths, your Sean Salisburys, your Tom Jacksons. I remember all these names because they piggy-backed on what [he] said,” Owens said.

“And if Skip Bayless had sidebar conversations with teammates or even certain coaches on the team about who I was, as a football player or a person or my character, if they said something negative, they don’t speak for the 73 guys in that locker room. And then he used language like, ’50 percent of the guys liked him, 50 percent of the guys didn’t.’ You didn’t ask 100 percent of the guys to come up with those numbers.”

Owens believes that his reputation affected even the best moments of his career. His legendary performance in Super Bowl XXXIX on essentially a broken leg was covered, Owens said, in part as a “selfish” act in which Owens made himself the story. The reception to that story was the first time Owens said he realized how much his race influenced media coverage.

“If I was white, this would have never been said,” he said. “It would have been totally different.”

Later in his career, Owens believes the narrative Bayless wove hampered his ability to keep playing. Once his play declined, Owens said, teams and fanbases resisted taking a chance on him because of the reputation drummed up by people like Bayless.

“I read the comments, like, ‘Oh you were trash, you ruined every locker room,’ and they regurgitate basically everything that a lot of the Skip Baylesses were saying about me,” he said. “But there’s a lot of great players who played on multiple teams. And because of that narrative, that perception of who I was, and it was always something minute, if I got in an argument with a teammate or whatever. They act like I am the only one … that has ever had an argument with a teammate or a coach.”

Throughout the interview with Kellerman, Owens admitted that he lacked awareness as a young player. Some of his relationships with teammates and coaches, he said, may have been worse than he realized because he didn’t have much of a filter. And Owens certainly presented more distractions than the average player, as his touchdown celebrations took on a life of their own and he took on acting, rapping, and reality TV roles.

Still, many other players are famous off the field, generate outsized attention, and aren’t punished for it by the media. Decades ago, when Owens broke out, personalities like Bayless had free rein to paint athletes however they wanted, and Black stars often bore the consequences of that more than White athletes.