What a shame that whatever the T.O. situation was, it pushed the death of Byron Nelson off the top shelf of most covered events of the week.

…One of the most remarkable things that I remember about Byron Nelson is that 50 and 60 years after he played in tournaments he could recall the exact situation on hole after hole after hole of critical shots…

…2 weeks ago the Rangers affirmed that Buck Showalter was their manager for next season. But that doesn’t stop the continued speculation about his job security given the Rangers mediocre stretch run after making significant additions to the club at the trade deadline…

…With all the hub-bub surrounding Owens this week, with a lower rung Tennessee on the schedule this week and arch rival Philadelphia on deck this makes for one of those classic “flat spot” emotional situations for the Cowboys on Sunday. Bill Parcells has seen a bunch of circumstances like this and you know deep down there must be concerns for what looks like a “gimme”…

We don’t know what happened Tuesday night at Terrell Owens’ home. We’ll probably never know.

But I wonder how many of you thought the way I did yesterday watching those dog and pony shows at Valley Ranch and feeling that we didn’t get the truth.

Both Owens and his publicist Kim Ethridge were hustled away from the microphones before they could say too much. It appears that the strategy here is to call this an allergic reaction.

Questions:

If it were that simple why wouldn’t T.O. simply give us the list of supplements he was taking so it could be determined if an allergic reaction were possible?

And those pills? Who takes 30 some-odd pills out of a bottle and puts them in a drawer and leaves only 2 or 3 in the bottle? Why would you do that?

And picture the scene that we’re asked to imagine at Owens’ house…he puts a couple of pills in his mouth, Ms. Ethridge asks a question and doesn’t get the response she feels necessary and calls 911?

And so much of the night still has foggy questions about it, but we’ll never get answers to those. Multiple NFL Insiders have reported that both San Francisco and Philadelphia asked Owens to get some kind of professional counseling help but he declined.

But regardless of all that, something’s wrong here. Police, paramedics and hospital can’t talk. Bill Parcells doesn’t seem to want to know. And we’ve got a hazy enough story so that whatever happened won’t ever be revealed.

But it is yet another one of those situations that caused other teams to look at Owens this off-season and say “No thank you”.

With the sad news of the death of Byron Nelson on Wednesday, we have lost one of the great athletes and sportsman in our history.

His record of winning 11 straight tournaments is one of the handful of athletic feats that will never be matched.

One also wonders about the future of his tournament. The Byron Nelson at Las Colinas annually drew one of the finest fields of all of the “non-major” tournaments. They came because of Byron Nelson.

With the loss of this extraordinary gentleman one wonders what will keep this tournament from slipping back in the pack of stops on the tour…

…For the first time in a long time none of us can be certain who’s going to win the Texas/OU game. Last year, everyone knew that Texas was a vastly superior team…For the few years before, there was little question OU was the better team. But can we be sure who’s the better team this year? The results of games this season don’t give us a good clue. Texas failed in its only prime time game (against Ohio St.) and OU who rightfully should be undefeated still has a defense that looks very easy to move against.

…Name a sport played internationally that you’re certain that the US ranks as the best in the world.

So much for the Tony Romo replaces Drew Bledsoe bonfire. Bledsoe was very good against Washington. Would have thrown for 350-400 yards had his receivers not had the worst day for Cowboys Receivers in decades. And, he had plenty of passing yards wiped out due to penalties…

…The star of the game for Dallas, however, was the defense. It appears that the only team in the NFC East with a top flight defense is the Dallas Cowboys…

…All of a sudden, all of what had been hot button items have been erased, at least for 2 weeks. Nobody will be calling for Romo. Vanderjagt’s kicks were true. The offensive line played creditably. And TO’s hurt after an extremely poor performance.

The most critical stretch of the season awaits with 5 road games of the next 7. Four of those road visits will be to teams who consider themselves NFC contenders…

…Quietly the Cowboys got solid games from rookie starters Anthony Fasano and Pat Watkins…

…With all of the positives it must be noted that Dallas continues some incredibly sloppy play…9 penalties for 90 yards is flatly unacceptable. So is allowing a 100 yard kickoff return where the first Cowboy player to touch the returner was the kicker. 9 drops should be a 2 month total. If Dallas played this same type of game for the next 7 games, they’d lose 4 or 5

The Rangers decision to keep Buck Showalter as manager was made with firmness and kind of “matter-of-fact” approach.

That’s yet another good sign from young General Manager Jon Daniels. Showalter has his critics—not as a game manager but because of his well documented (controlling nature) style of management.

But this franchise has waffled so many times that it’s refreshing to see them make a simple, straight forward, “it’s over” decision.

Given the criticism of Showalter, any questions about his coming back simply ended Friday. Had they lingered for a few more weeks until the end of the season it would have indicated more and more of a shaky confidence in Showalter. That thinking has also ended.

It is never “early” in an NFL season…Every game is big…

If the Cowboys lose on Sunday and fall to 0-2 it would be huge…Not only will they be 0-2, they’ll also be 0-1 in the division.

But all that is numbers…My question is: what kind of outcry would there be if the Cowboys lose to Washington Sunday night?

First of all, this is very winnable game. Washington is not as good as the Cowboys…They just are not…IF the Cowboys were to lose a winnable game at home, the criticism would be outrageous.

Second, this is a home game…You simply cannot lose a home game against a division opponent if you are expecting success.

Third, next week is a bye week…Give this town an extra week to talk about a Cowboys loss and there’ll be no way to measure the amount of public negativity directed at the organization.