Randy White: Cowboy Critic Carter 'Is An Idiot'

   Recognizing that Cowboys ties make for strange bedfellows, guess which old-school Hall-of-Famer is coming to the defense of Terrell Owens -- and doing so while willing to joust with Cowboys critic Cris Carter?

   “Cris Carter made an idiotic statement,’’ Cowboys legend Randy White tells me in an exclusive interview. “Anybody who says a team ‘doesn’t deserve to make the playoffs,’ or something like that, he’s an idiot.''

   Contined White: "The whole goal of football is to get to the playoffs. Then comes the ultimate goal, winning the Super Bowl. And if you get in, you’ve earned it. You’ve then got a shot at The Big Show. To think otherwise, that’s just ignorant.’’

  White was responding to my relaying to him of Carter’s comments, made on ESPN radio, in which the Pro Bowler-turned-ESPN analyst said, “If Dallas goes on a run like that, it's a discredit to team sports, it's a discredit to team unity. I mean, it's a discredit to all the things that we sacrifice when we put together a football team. … (the Cowboys) also have the dysfunction thing down pat, too."

   Long-time followers of Carter’s career will note that “team unity’’ wasn’t exactly his specialty when he got dumped by the Eagles for substance-abuse problems. Also notable in the “dysfunction’’ category would be Carter’s leadership of a 1998 Minnesota Vikings team that choked away its chances at a title.

   Maybe the point is, most football teams are remarkable similar. Ups, downs, function, dysfunction.

  “There’s nothing new under the sun in the NFL, and unless you are living in that locker room, you cannot know for sure what’s going on,’’ White said. “But I’ll tell you what I see, out of T.O. in particular: He’s the first guy out to practice. He blocks downfield. He wants the ball. Maybe he expresses that differently than I would, but I respect that he wants to win.

  “Is he purposely trying to tear his locker room apart? Of course not. He just wants to win.’’

  Randy White, who played for Dallas from 1975-to-1988, was inducted into Canton in 1994 and is the epitome of “old-school NFL,’’ taking up for Terrell Owens, to many the poster child for the spoiled new-schoolers?

  “Owens brings a lot of this attention on himself, but being controversial doesn’t mean he doesn’t want to win,’’ said White, who participated in the “Farewell to Texas Stadium’’ ceremonies on Saturday night and was in the odd position of taking the field and going down the tunnel with 100 old Cowboys legends while, coming up the tunnel, were Owens and the present-day Cowboys who’d just lost to the Ravens. “As a player, when you lose, a little piece of you should die. I looked in their eyes in that tunnel. They felt that way. Each in their own way, I believe a little piece of them had died.

  “Cris Carter or anybody else who says otherwise either doesn’t understand, is trying to be controversial or is an idiot.’’

436pm dec 24 2008