Tom E. Curran • E-mail

ROCHESTER, N.Y. - The Buffalo Bills’ afternoon practice ended around 4:15. Yet here it is, nearly 5:30 and a throng of Bills fans is still going strong.

Penned in at the front of the St. John Fisher College football stands, they are all turned to the left, looking at the same spot. The object of their attention, Terrell Owens, is beyond the end zone, behind a fence, over a narrow street and sitting on a stone wall talking amiably with a Bills media relations person.

The front of his bright red t-shirt says, “iLove” the back reads “ME SOME ME”.

Apparently, the fans love them some him, too. Intermittently they yell “T.Ooooooo!” and request — in vain — that he come down and sign for them. He doesn’t budge. Neither do they. For the better part of a half-hour this continues. It seems the fans are content to merely gaze on the man.

Owens’ presence has banished the irrelevance Bills fans have come to know. Because of this, he is beloved without even playing a game.

Owens, of course, could easily hold his conversation away from public view. The doors to the Bills’ temporary training room at the college are no more than 15 feet away. But he chooses to luxuriate in the adulation. He lets the screams of “We love you!” and “I love your show!!!” wash over him.

Right now, Buffalo — the team and its followers — don’t want to hear about how divisive T.O. will be, how selfish he is, how he’ll ruin their Bills. To them, the entire situation might be wrong, but it feels so right.

This decade, the Bills have been one of the NFL’s most boring teams. Not good enough to take seriously, not bad enough to turn into a punch line, they’ve gone 7-9 three straight years. They haven’t made the playoffs since 1999. A 9-7 season in 2004 was the high point.

It’s been a hard fall from the ’90s when they were the AFC’s dominant team, making the playoffs eight out of 10 seasons and going to the Super Bowl four straight years (we all know how those ended).

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But the surliness that seeped in this decade has been peeled back with Owens’ arrival. He’s put the paddles to the chest of the entire region.

And this week, it feels like old times.

The stands are packed. T.O. cereal is flying off the shelves of Buffalo supermarkets. Two Bills — owner Ralph Wilson and defensive end Bruce Smith — are being inducted into the Hall of Fame and the Bills will be on national TV in the Hall of Fame game.

Even deathly dull head coach Dick Jauron has taken notice of a different vibe.

“Our fans have always been loud and supportive, and I would say that the volume has gone up and maybe the type of comment has changed some to some degree,” he said Monday. “But it’s all good, it’s all good. So as good as they’ve been it’s a little louder this year. Maybe more people, so it’s all been a big plus for us so far.”

Jauron is an exceedingly decent person, a former player and respected by his peers. But the notion of “sports entertainment” is lost on him. Four years ago, would he have welcomed a celebrity athlete like Owens? Hard to say. But given that he’ll be cleaning out his desk if the Bills don’t make the playoffs, he had little choice but to agree to taking on one of the most physically talented skill-position players in NFL history.

“This is like a one-night stand for both sides,” says Mark Gaughan, longtime Bills writer for the Buffalo News. “They need production and he needs a place to play. And the fans look at it as a win-win. If T.O. succeeds, the team wins and goes to the playoffs. If he doesn’t, they have to blow it all up and most fans overwhelmingly want that to happen.”

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Owens is in Buffalo on a one-year deal. There is no arguing that professional football is merely Owens’ main account, the umbrella business that allows his satellite businesses, such as reality shows, clothing lines, cereals and endorsements, to flourish.

That’s why he’s so widely reviled. Owens’ unabashed narcissism and track record of putting himself ahead of his team that are his greatest crimes.

But consider the following statements: T.O. has never bumped a traffic cop with his car or shot himself in the thigh with a Glock, never tested positive for PEDs and pummeled a bouncer or been arrested for DUI.

In a league littered with players who can’t stay on the right side of the law, Owens has never been arrested. The only time he played in a Super Bowl, he did so six weeks after breaking his leg and spraining his ankle. And he was dominant.