Even if he's telling truth, something's weird with T.O. (as usual)

Yet it is difficult to believe that an officer would make up the salacious details in the report.

A troubled, insecure Owens explains a great deal. It explains his seemingly self-loathing personality. It explains his outrageous sensitivity to criticism.

If Owens was not an athlete, and instead an accountant or cable repairman, and we saw him do the bizarre, insidious things Owens has done over his career while in San Francisco or Philadelphia, we wouldn't think twice about that person being troubled. But we think of athletes as impervious to anguish, some sort of mental robots, their minds as resolute and taut as their thick pectoral muscles.

They are, at times, as insecure and troubled as the rest of us. Their piles of money and cooing handlers are not armor against the complexities and sand traps that the mind presents.

"I learned a long time ago that just because an athlete is big and strong physically," said sports psychologist Joel Fish, "it does not mean an athlete is big and strong emotionally."

Fish is the director of the Center for Sport Psychology and has worked with dozens of professional athletes. He has never examined Owens and was not speaking of him specifically when we talked. But several things Fish said were spot on.

The issue is this. Owens has been under extreme and intense pressure. Experts like Fish believe everyone, whether an actor or athlete or average guy, needs a release valve for that pressure. If there isn't one, trouble can follow.

"The question is, what's been building up inside?" asked Fish. "Most high-profile athletes have a public persona and a private persona. What is going on inside and how is all of that pressure affecting him?"

Is it possible that behind the cockiness, behind the sit-ups in the driveway, behind the camera smooching and showboating, far behind the wide smile and defiant attitude, there is a man with gigantic insecurities nibbling away at him? Did he accidentally overdose on painkillers and supplements? Was this some strange mistake? Or was the attention starved wide receiver sending a distress signal that handlers scurried to turn into something more innocent? Was the man who likes to be the show just arranging for a different type of curtain call?

Owens gets the benefit of the doubt here. I'll believe him for now. There is no question however that something stinks here. At the very least some of what the publicist claimed in her press conference does not make sense.

And I don't believe, at least in this instance, that the police are completely lying or that sloppy.

This "is not if the suicide note doesn't fit, you must acquit."

Meanwhile, As The T.O. Turns churns on.

What will happen next?