From the “Why hasn’t this happened already?” department comes news of Cowboys wide receiver/narcissistic superfreak Terrell Owens‘ personal blog on YARDBARKER, making him the latest professional athlete to link up with the user-generated web site. If T.O.’s first entry is any indication, we’re going to see a whole lot of discussion whenever he writes anything.

(Finally, a chance for T.O. to do this in words.)

For the record, Owens’ first post consisted of three sentences, with a total of 50 words (punctuation not included), all directed as a subtle shot toward former Vikings wideout-turned-ESPN announcer and commentator Cris Carter. Of course, Carter started the whole virtual slap-fight himself when he said, when asked what he’d do with Owens, that he’d “take one bullet and put it right in (him). Bam!”

That sounds like a legitimate beef to us, and Owens tactfully — or in what seems to be a tactful manner — declined to order a jihad on Cris, instead trying to subtly turn the tables on the comment. Of course, that hasn’t kept the commentators from obliterating T.O. in the post’s threads, with a predominantly Philadelphia crowd calling out Owens’ entire career within the parameters of the Carter comment.

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When it comes to books *authored* by athletes, we’ve always been dubious of ghostwriters. That is, until we started attempting to read edit-free blogs written by athletes. We find most of them to be spectacularly narcisstic and boring, with a few notable exceptions (Gil Arenas is the best read).

Yardbarker.com is a sports community that’s all-in when it comes to athletes’ blogs (Baron Davis, Donovan McNabb, Greg Oden). One of the first big names landed by the site was Oden. And from what we’ve read the past year, his blog is the best on the site.

Oden starting writing when he was just out of college, so he still had the candor that is absent from most NBA players caught up in the league’s marketing complex. He also suffered a catastrophic injury, which knocked his ego down a peg or two (not that he had much of one to begin with).

Anyway, Oden’s latest blog entry compelled us to link to it. It’s about the circumstances surrounding the death of his best friend, and how he is coping. It’s worth a read, and his blog is worth a bookmark.