COMMENTARY

By Mike DeCourcy

updated 1:29 p.m. ET July 18, 2006

Mike DeCourcy

The latest team Terrell Owens is attempting to wreck is among the least imposing he's challenged in his long, phenomenally successful career as a team-wrecker.

No, not the Dallas Cowboys.

Owens hasn't even begun to sabotage them. Just wait.

We're talking about the team that “helped” Owens to launch his second autobiography: co-author Jason Rosenhaus and publisher Simon & Schuster. Owens claimed he was misquoted in the book, although he claims the quotes about being misquoted were taken out of context.

Beautiful.

Owens is the patron saint of the no-character athlete. He has achieved all a no-character athlete can hope to achieve: fame, wealth, notoriety. In that regard, the Cincinnati Bengals have far to go to match him, but they seem to be trying to accomplish that goal through sheer numbers.

In the most recent draft — including last week's supplemental selection of erstwhile Virginia linebacker Ahmad Brooks — the Bengals collected three more players with histories of behavioral problems. Add them to 2005 draft picks Chris Henry, a wide receiver with four arrests since joining the team, and Odell Thurman, a linebacker who has been suspended for four games for violating the NFL's substance abuse policy.

Brooks was kicked off the squad at Virginia, which is how he came to be available for a supplemental draft.

Where I live, in Cincinnati, there is a fairly raucous debate regarding whether it was prudent for the Bengals to select so many at-risk players. Athlete behavior has been an issue here for some time, as the result of the Cincinnati Bearcats going through more than their share of off-court incidents.

There are those who contend the Bengals should aspire to set a better example. And there are those who contend the Bengals need to get the best players they can. What neither side seems eager to discuss is the role character plays in whether teams are successful, which appears to be especially true in the NFL.

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The New England Patriots are full of players who have sacrificed personal goals to achieve collective success and apparently free of players who can't manage to avoid trouble. The Pittsburgh Steelers are very much the same. Those teams can afford to take the occasional chance on a player with a shaky reputation, as the Patriots did with Corey Dillon and the Steelers are with Santonio Holmes, because the peer pressure inside the locker room is to conform to the higher standard.

The Bengals have allowed wideout Chad Johnson's me-fest to detract from the potent leadership of such players as tackle Willie Anderson. Five young players with questionable character placed into that locker room aren't likely to change their behavior; as we've seen, Thurman and Henry have not. Not only are teams at risk of being undone by selfishness inside the locker room when such players are added, they're also at risk of losing those players as the result of their peripheral activities.

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Character is of no consequence? Well, Thurman is gone for four games, a tough opening stretch in which quarterback Carson Palmer might not be available or at full strength. It would help the Bengals, I would imagine, to have one of their most productive linebackers on the field.

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