Terrell Owens’ Venom Is Everywhere

Terrell Owens, after being the target of 18 passes on Sunday, demanded more fries. You might be happy with your broke-ass tiny fries, America, your mere 250 calories worth of “nutrition,” but T.O. isn’t gonna stand here and let you tell him he deserves anything less than 500 calories of pure oil-fried goodness, or that the Cowboys shouldn’t have gotten him more involved than they did. Get him his super-sized opportunity fries, and get them now.↵↵⇥The Cowboys ran 58 offensive plays. They threw it to him 18 times and let Owens run it twice on two end-arounds. Yet when asked if the ball was thrown his way often enough, Owens said: “I would say no. I’m a competitor, and I want the ball.↵↵Fake outrage will surface in the dumber corners of the sporting commentariat, sure, but even the most mediocre of columnists recognizes now that Owens’ functional insanity is as boring and steady a commodity as a treasury bill. And also that Owens is merely acting his part in a long national tradition of demanding more even when you’ve been given an embarrassing amount of opportunity already.↵↵The truly interesting angle on the story is this: If Terrell Owens is displaying signs of erratic behavior, irritability, and numbness to those around him, how do we know it’s him and not the potentially harmful amounts of caffeine in his line of T.O.-endorsed energy drinks, “Venom?”↵

↵↵⇥Just days after the Dallas Cowboys receiver signed to endorse an energy drink called Venom, Johns Hopkins warns that such drinks contain enough caffeine to be dangerous...↵⇥↵⇥Lawyers are already grabbing for the September 24 issue of Drug and Alcohol Dependence, where 41 cases of caffeine abuse between 2002-2004 are documented, with symptoms like “nausea, vomiting, high blood pressure, tremors, dizziness and numbness.” (That’s the drinkers, not the lawyers.)↵⇥

↵↵If attorneys swooped in hoping to make a class-action quickstrike here, they’re sorely out of luck. It would be hard to win a case in any court by arguing you drank something called “Venom” without expecting something bad to happen. I do have a name for people who think “nausea, vomiting, tremors, and dizziness” are problems associated with caffeine, though: “simpering weaklings.” The 10th cup is when the fun begins, amateurs. (And that shooting pain in your left shoulder? No worries. Either it will go away, or you will.)↵