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Fake article written by SI's Peter King of Monday Morning QB fame; Cowboy fan masturbatory material in italics.
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/200...qb.1114/2.html
NEW YORK (AP) -- Arbitrator Richard Bloch, citing the precedent of the 2005 Terrell Owens case, today freed wide receiver Chad Johnson from the Cincinnati Bengals, despite the team's claim it had a valid contract with him through 2009, ending a bitter contract dispute with the team and putting the colorful receiver on the open market immediately.
In a stunning development, Johnson seemed close to signing a long-term contract with the Pittsburgh Steelers. The 7-3 Bengals are tied with Pittsburgh atop the AFC North with six games to play, including a crucial Week 16 game at Pittsburgh.
"I knew all along the Bengals couldn't hold me down,'' a jubilant Johnson said after the hearing. Johnson was flanked by his agent, Drew Rosenhaus, who won the same kind of case a year ago with Owens.
The Bengals accepted the arbitrator's ruling with anger.
"I have no idea what a contract means anymore,'' said Bengals president Mike Brown. "We had the contractual right to deactivate Chad for the rest of the season as long as we paid him. We fully intended to pay him, yet the arbitrator said our rules don't matter.''
The Bengals had been asking Bloch to uphold their contractual rights to Johnson. As with Owens and the Eagles, Cincinnati tired of Johnson's divisive complaints about his contract. After he refused to dress for a game two weeks ago against Pittsburgh, the Bengals said he would be suspended for four weeks and then deactivated each of the remaining five weeks of the season. The Bengals also said Johnson would be waived after the season. Bloch's ruling, eerily similar to the one he made last year when he freed Owens from his Eagles' contract with six games left in the season, ends the Bengals' suspension of Johnson at two games and means he can immediately sign with any team.
An hour after the press conference, SI.com's Don Banks reported that New England and Pittsburgh had both made substantial offers to Johnson soon after Bloch's ruling. Pittsburgh, Banks reported, was close to a deal with Johnson, and a source close to the Steelers said they wanted him to being practice with the team this week, so he'd be ready to play in Pittsburgh's game at Cleveland next Sunday.
Rosenhaus could not be reached for comment -- the first time in the last 11 months his cell phone rang without being answered -- but earlier in the day, he said the Bengals didn't learn from Owens' victory over the Eagles in 2005.
Owens fought to have his contract voided in November 2005, arguing that the Eagles suspended him and planned to deactivate him for the season after the suspension. Bloch ruled the Eagles had to release him because they had no intention of playing him, and were holding him back from earning several incentives in his seven-year, $48 million contract.
Owens, who signed a five-year contract with Dallas a week after the ruling, played a big role in knocking the Eagles out of the 2005 playoffs with his strong play down the stretch for the Cowboys.
Dallas (10-0) six wins away from the NFL's first perfect season since 1972. Owens' 76 catches, 1,047 receiving yards and 13 touchdowns lead all receivers. Off the field, Owens has taken a vow of silence with the media and hasn't antagonized his teammates the way he did a year ago in Philadelphia with his constant badgering of quarterback Donovan McNabb.
Johnson signed a contract extension with Cincinnati in 2003 through the 2009 season. He received a $7 million signing bonus in 2003 and a $3.5 million option bonus in 2004. But he claimed his salaries -- $2.75 million in 2006, $3 million in 2007, $3.4 million in 2008, $3.6 million in 2009 -- were insufficient for a player who led the NFL with 106 catches and 17 touchdown receptions in 2005.
The Bengals, always a hard-line organization, refused to renegotiate the with Johnson, saying they wouldn't be able to withhold the sanc y of their other player contracts if they re-worked a star's deal with four years left on it. That led to Johnson staging a wildcat walkout before the Bengals-Steelers game, for which the club suspended him.
Bloch said in his ruling the Bengals were standing in the way of a healthy player's right to earn a living. He would have been paid while deactivated, but he wouldn't have been able to earn any incentive money in the contract, which makes up a significant amount of money beyond his base salary.
Outside the NFL offices on Park Avenue in Manhattan late today, commissioner Paul Tagliabue said he didn't like the precedents the Owens and Johnson contract reversals set for the league.
"For 86 years in the NFL, a contract has been a contract,'' said Tagliabue. "But with these two rulings, players now understand they can get out of their deals and become instant free-agents by simply acting up, protesting their situations and demanding to be paid more than they are. If we allow this to happen, there's no sense in signing players to contracts anymore.''
Bloch could not be reached for comment.
In Pittsburgh, Johnson would be paired with Pro Bowl wideout Hines Ward to form one of the best receiver tandems in football.
Reached tonight in Pittsburgh, quarterback Ben Roethlisberger said: "This is Christmas six weeks early, if it's true. I don't care who's right and who's wrong in the contract part of it. All I know is there's no way we'll lose this division now. We just took Cincinnati's best player.''
