In a time when there are TV shows created around guys who talk to dogs, couples having their first dates in the dark and fat people dancing… when they’re giving reality shows to former reality show contestants… there’s a lot, LOT of mediocre television out there. But once in a great while they produce a show that’s better than mediocre. It’s terrible. Gawdawful, “How do I get the last half hour of my life back?” terrible. To the surprise of no one, “The T.O. Show,” the reality show featuring Terrell Owens, is just such a program. Calling it “bad” is an insult to truly bad TV. It’s pluperfectly bad. VH1 has done the impossible. They’ve put together a show that is more vapid, self-absorbed and disinteresting than Owens himself. “The T.O. Show” follows the exploits of T.O. and his two female friends/assistants/enablers/fellow attention whores while they do… nothing. Nothing you’d want to see anyway. He signs with the Buffalo Bills. They help him buy a house. They talk a lot about the difference between “Terrell” (who’s nice) and his alter ego “T.O.” (who’s naughty). “T.O.” wants to go out to a club and party but the girls decide he should stay home, be “Terrell” and behave himself. So… “Terrell” stays home, calls the hot real estate agent who sold him the house and parties like “T.O.”!!! Get it? That’s the plot!!! Laugh? I almost did.

What’s most disturbing about “The T.O. Show” however is that it’s not even the worst TV show ever to star an ex-jock. In fact, I’m not even sure it belongs in the Top 10. Counting down:

The Worst Non-Sports TV Appearances by Athletes:

10. “George” starring George Foreman (1993)

No one in the history of modern American public life ever did a 180 with his image the way George Foreman did. In his younger boxing days he was a silent, vicious assassin. He was Mike Tyson without the squeaky voice and criminal record. He was seven feet tall, killed men by the hundreds, shot fireballs from his eyes and bolts of lightning out of his arse. A generation and one glorified waffle iron later though and he was transformed into “Lovable Ol’ George.” So much so had his public image changed that ABC actually built a sitcom around him. He played a retired boxer with a zany family or some such crap. It lasted only a handful of episodes and no clip of it is to be found anywhere on the net. But you can be sure it featured an improbably hot wife, precocious kids, a wisecracking, cantankerous grandparent and George’s doofusy, blue collar friends. And no doubt had story lines like “George’s Surprise Birthday Party” and “George Sneaks Out to Go Bowling.”

9. “Hunter” starring Fred Dryer (1984)


Now that every cop on TV is a geek who solves crimes by studying fiber samples, reading body language or crunching numbers through the Fibonacci sequence, it’s hard to imagine a time when TV cops were hardboiled dicks who cracked cases by cracking heads, bribing informants, and best of all, walking into strip joints to ask a few questions. But they did. And you had all sorts of TV gumshoes. Stylish South Beach guys. Fat guys. Guys in wheelchairs. Even blind guys. Hunter wasn’t really any of them. Fred Dryer was a former NY Giant and LA Rams player (who was property of the Patriots for a few hours once on Draft Day), who was just sort of a generic TV tough guy. A Reagan Era big-gun-toting badass trying to be a TV version of Dirty Harry. And best of all he had a hot sidekick, which made up for the fact that Fred Dryer couldn’t act scared if he was on fire.

8. “Father Murphy” starring Merlin Olsen (1981)

Olsen was one of the certified nasty, tough, bone-shattering Defensive Lineman off all time. He never missed a game in his 15 year career. He had 92 sacks in 208 games. He made 14 Pro Bowls. Then somehow parlayed that into a gig on “Little House on the Prairie” and then his own show where he played a frontier priest. Olson might not have been the world’s greatest actor, but as this picture demonstrates, there were certain elements of portraying a priest he could pull off like he was the Phillip Seymour Hoffman of the ’80s.

7. “Dancing With the Stars” featuring Jerry Rice, Lawrence Taylor, Emmitt Smith and Jason Taylor (2005)

I’m not saying that dancing is in and of itself effeminate. But no true football fan wants to see first ballot Hall of Famers Samba-ing in satin pants. If Bruno had tried to show Chuck Bednarik or Dick Butkus the proper way to do Jazz Hands there would’ve been nothing left of his remains. In fairness though, Shawn Johnson and Kristi Yamaguchi don’t belong on this list. Shawn was cute on the show and Kristi was hotter than Arizona car seats.

6. “McEnroe” with John McEnroe (2007)

Gee, it seemed like such a natural. John McEnroe is an unlikable, humorless, monosyllabic drone who made a name for himself by yelling “It was OUT!” at line judges and calling them “fool.” Why not give him his own talk show on a financial news channel? Somehow, it just didn’t workand on more than on occasion it drew a 0.0 Nielsen rating, which is less than even the worst Hi Def sunglasses infomercial is capable of. But “McEnroe” did lay the groundwork for other shows starring unlikable, humorless, multisyllabic drones, and Keith Olbermann is grateful.

5. “Saved by the Bell: The College Years” with Bob Golic (1993)

The former Patriot, Brown and Raider Defensive Tackle showed his acting chops by playing… a former 49er. A former 49er turned dorm advisor for a group of 27 year olds playing 19 year olds who act like 16 year olds. But it was in his ability to play the tough-on-the-outside-but-creampuff-on-the-inside guy where Golic showed a range of emotion that other actors can only dream of. The episode where Mr. Rogers became attached to X97 the lab mouse almost made Tom Hanks give up acting out of shame.

4. “Webster” featuring Alex Karras (1983)


ABC wanted to cash in on the popularity of “Diff’rent Strokes” by building a show around younger, cuter and even littler Gary Coleman knockoff Emmanuel Lewis. The problem for them was: What do you do when there’s only one Mr. Drummond in the world? The answer was simple. Hire a 4-time Pro Bowl Defensive Tackle (why was it always the Defensive Tackles?) and member of the NFL’s 1960s All Decade Team who was last seen punching out a horse. The good news for Karras fans was the show was a hit. The bad news was that for all their years of waiting, Karras never uttered the line, “Don’t know. George Papadapolis only pawn in game of life.”

3. “The Today Show” with Tiki Barber (2007)

No sooner had Tom Coughlin resurrected Tiki’s sputtering career by teaching him the complex act of, you know… actually holding onto the football… that Barber rewarded him by retiring from the game. So the Giants team responded by having a party. After he left. As a football player, Tiki was intolerably self-absorbed and his teammates were only too happy to drive him over to 30 Rock, dump him on NBC’s front step and speed off to the sound of banjo getaway music. And Barber showed the same cluelessness with his new employer than he had with his old one, announcing he didn’t want to cover sports. That he’d moved on with his life and only wanted to do celebrity interviews, cooking demos and talk weather with Al Roker. So within a few short months after settling in, NBC assigned Tiki to… covering the Giants in Super Bowl XLII. Another fumble by Barber.

2. “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” starring Bruce Jenner (2007)

It’s the oldest idea in television. Take a talentless socialite with straw for brains whose only famous because ahem “somebody” uh “accidentally” released her sex tape and put her on a reality show with her insipid family. Add in a stepfather who was once the World’s Greatest Athlete but now looks like an old lesbian, and voila! You’ve made a hit show and given a much needed financial boost to Ryan Seacrest. But like I said, it’s not the most original idea. Back in the ’50s they did the same thing with Jim Thorpe and the Gabor sisters.

1. “The Magic Hour” starring Magic Johnson (1998)


For fans of bad art, Magic Johnson’s late night talk show was The Mona Lisa. It wasn’t just the worst non-sports TV show ever to star an athlete, it might have been simply the worst show in television history, period. It literally was bad for my health, since in the dark days before the DVR, I stayed up practically every night to watch it and the lack of sleep started to wear me out. But I couldn’t go to bed knowing it was on out of fear I might miss Magic stopping halfway through a joke without delivering the punch line. Magic telling pointless partial stories that never went anywhere. Magic pulling anyone out of the audience that was having a birthday and singing “Happy Birthday” to them without any rhyme or reason why anyone should care. His Andy Richter was Craig Shoemaker, a good comic. But for the very first joke of the very first episode, the writers had him tell a Rodney King joke, thereby guaranteeing Shoemaker would be unpopular with the show’s target demographic. Eventually they fired Shoemaker. In mid-episode, during the commercial. They just came back and he was gone. Guest Arsenio Hall came out and said “Where’s Shoe?” and Magic told him they were going in a different direction and started asking him about his trip to Vegas as if Carson used to do this all the time. Apart from this one epic episode where Howard Stern (another gigantic fan of the show) appeared, the ratings were terrible. Magic’s popularity didn’t draw his fans and on a given night he had fewer people in his audience than he had naked women in his hotel room on Laker road trips. Fantastically, monumentally bad.

Whenever I do a long form article like this I get lots of feedback from guys who entirely miss the point and want to add names that don’t fit the premise. So feel free to send your comments and suggestions along to jerry@barstoolsports.com so I can disregard answer them.