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The Hall of Fame wide receiver tallied numerous
excessive celebration penalties during a career that ended long
before the National Football League in 2017 relaxed its rules on
celebrations in a bid to allow players more room to have fun
after making big plays.
Owens, who is third on the NFL's all-time list with 153
touchdown catches, said he can only dream of what could have
been had he played under the league's current rules.
"There is money to be made all the way around," Owens told
Reuters in an interview to promote his new HiStudios Original
podcast with former NFL receiver Matthew Hatchette called "Getch'a
Popcorn Ready with T.O. & Hatch."
"Just think about the touchdown celebrations. The fact that guys
are being embraced for things that I was being heavily
criticized and vilified for.
"And so that helps with their marketability, their branding and
things of that nature, so there is a lot of money to be made
just by self promotion where it was frowned upon when I was
doing it."
The crackdown on touchdown celebrations that fans tend to enjoy
had critics at the time saying NFL stood for "No Fun League."
Owens' reputation as an on-field entertainer began in 2000 when,
as a member of the San Francisco 49ers, he celebrated a
touchdown by running to midfield and standing on the Dallas
Cowboys' blue star logo while looking skyward with outstretched
arms. Dallas fans were not amused, though they later embraced
him once he became one of their own.
The flamboyant wide receiver found many creative ways to
celebrate touchdowns, whether pulling a Sharpie hidden in his
sock to sign a game ball, dancing with cheerleaders or pouring a
spectator's bucket of popcorn into his helmeted face.
Aside from his end zone antics, Owens proved to be a prolific
receiver with great hands and a knack for making big plays
during a career in which he played for five different teams from
1996-2010.
Despite finishing his career second in all-time receiving yards
and eclipsing 1,000 receiving yards nine times over an 11-year
span, Owens was not voted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in
his first two years of eligibility.
Owens, who commanded the spotlight for both his on-field
achievements and his on- and off-field antics, is hardly the
first Hall of Famer forced to wait multiple years before being
elected. But he made no secret that he felt voters allowed
perceptions about his character to overshadow his
accomplishments.
"I deserved (to be elected sooner) based on my numbers and the
product that everyone saw on the football field," said Owens,
whose podcast will include topical discussions on sports and pop
culture. "The voters went outside of the criteria in which guys
are inducted."
When Owens, who played for San Francisco, Philadelphia, Dallas,
Buffalo and Cincinnati, was finally inducted in 2018 in his
third eligible year, he protested by boycotting the enshrinement
ceremony in Canton, Ohio. He has no regrets about the decision.
"Not at all. How can I regret or miss something that I've never
experienced?" said Owens, the first living inductee to skip the
ceremony.
"It's just like if you are dating a girl for a couple of weeks
and then you break up or whatever and she says 'did you miss
me?' How can you miss something that you don't even know?"
(Reporting by Frank Pingue in Toronto; Editing by Bill Berkrot)
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