Well, sort of. Would the front office of the Buffalo Bills have preferred that Terrell Owens showed up Monday for the start of the team's voluntary conditioning workouts? Probably.

Terrell sold a lot of wolf tickets about his commitment to the franchise and his excitement with beginning a new chapter of his remarkable story in Buffalo. That excitement apparently doesn't extend to being there when the first bell rang in mid-March, which happened to be on Monday.

What did the Bills think they were getting for a paltry $6.5 million? Whatever they thought, the didn't get Terrell on Monday, although, as the front office pointed out, the voluntary conditioning session lasts 12 weeks! And only the players who live in the Buffalo area (both of them) are usually around for the whole thing. Players stop by for a while, lift a few weights, continue their off-season.

Still, as the new kid in town, trying to make a good first impression, it would be a wise player who was there on the first day with his new notebooks and sharpened pencils for the film study and position-coach meetings that go along with the conditioning program.

Mark it down as Buffalo's first disappointment with Owens -- albeit a small one this time. There will be others to come.

Matt Mosley of ESPN.com reported over the weekend that he was eating beer-battered biscuits when the caller ID on his phone showed an incoming call from free agent right tackle Jon Runyan, once and perhaps future employee of the Eagles.

The breakfast info slid Mosley, one of our favorite reporters, ever-so-slightly into Peter King territory (PK's weekly coffee report is not to be missed), but it was an interesting post, anyway.

Runyan had been apparently reading some reports nationally that he was considering retirement and, wanting to dissuade teams around the league from believing it, tapped Mosley on the shoulder to issue his not-dead-yet proclamation.

"I'm playing next season," Runyan reportedly told Mosley. "I just don't know where it will be. But it will be with somebody."

There are conflicting reports on when Runyan will be able to resume football preparation following his January microfracture knee surgery. Locally, it was reported that May is a reasonable time he can get back on the field. Runyan told Mosley he was pointing more toward July training camps.

The Eagles are in a wait-and-see position. If they come out of the draft and free agent process with enough tackle depth to augment Stacy Andrews on the right side and (currently) nobody on the left side, then Jon will have to ply his trade elsewhere.

Runyan was also asked about Donovan McNabb's apparent desire for a contract extension, even though his deal has two more seasons remaining.

"I always thought if players sign a contract, they should go ahead and honor it," Runyan said.

All those seasons of protecting McNabb are over, I guess, at least verbally if not physically. It should be noted that McNabb has not come out and demanded a new deal in public, nor has he indicated, privately or otherwise, that he wouldn't honor the deal that is in place.

This is the speculation time of year, though, and it's always good to chew over the possibilities along with our breakfast biscuits.

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Temple hung around against Arizona State on Friday, limited the Sun Devils' leading scorer, James Harden, most of the game, but weren't able to ever hold a lead in the Owls' 66-57 first-round loss in Miami.

The mathematics got to them in the end. The Owls shot just 37.3 percent from the field, compared to 51.3 percent for the Sun Devils. Turnovers and rebounds were even, Arizona State was given a few more free throw attempts and there is really no way to make those numbers come out to anything but a loss.

It was a low-possession game, just 60 possessions for each team. ASU scored better than a point per possession, which is pretty much the dividing line for offensive efficiency. Owls were 11-for-35 (31.4 percent) in shots not taken by Dionte Christmas. It was curious that Juan Fernandez got just six minutes for Temple, while Semaj Inge (0-for-10) got 36 minutes, but Inge played excellent defense and that -- along with some foul trouble for Fernandez -- probably kept him on the court.

The Owls were classy in defeat, and for a team that was far from a lock to even make the tournament, it was still a successful season. Here's the postgame press conference transcript, as supplied by the NCAA and ASAP Sports:

 COACH FRAN DUNPHY: Certainly want to congratulate Arizona State. I thought that they played very well. They have a good plan, and I thought that Glasser was just terrific in that first half. I would rather have not seen that first jumper go that hit the back of the rim and just kind of curled in the basket, but he made some really tough shots. He made great decisions. I thought he was the key in the first half. Pendergraph had a very solid game as you have come to appreciate about him.
I thought for us we had our moments. We had our looks. We did not take advantage of it, as we need to in a game of this magnitude and in this stage, on this stage. But again, congratulate Arizona State, and for us, we need to gather again. We'll gather next week and kind of critique the season and appreciate Dionte Christmas and Semaj and Sergio Olmos, and thank them for their great careers, and then the rest of us will move on to try to get back here again, which is not an easy task.

Q. Dionte, I think your last shot you took was around the five-minute mark. It was a three-pointer which could have tied the score. You didn't get another shot attempt from that point on. Were they doing something differently at that point to prevent you from getting a shot off?
DIONTE CHRISTMAS: Yeah, I thought those guys paid a little bit more attention than they were in the beginning of the game, especially since we were only down three and the game was a little bit close, so I thought those guys were switching off more aggressively on me and just paying a little bit more attention. But I thought as a result of that, my teammates got a lot of open shots, and that's when Lavoy started to get it going and Ryan Brooks. So that kind of opened things up a little bit more for us.

Q. Ryan, can you talk about going against Harden and what you guys did against him? Were you surprised you had so much success? Were you surprised you didn't see more from him?
RYAN BROOKS: I don't think necessarily we were surprised. I think down the stretch there we've built a lot of confidence in our defensive play, and we're just ready to step up to the challenge. But watching a lot of film and watching him these past couple days, he's a great player and just lets the game come to him, doesn't force anything, rarely forces the issue.
We just wanted to stay solid on him, know where he was out on the court, and if situations presented themselves, just step up and help and just recover it as good as we could. I thought we did a pretty good job on him.

Q. Dionte, when you played this out in your head before the game, if you had known that Ryan would do such a good job on Brooks and if you would have known you were going to put up the numbers you did, you would have thought you would have won probably, right?
DIONTE CHRISTMAS: Yeah, that sounds about right. But like Coach says, Pendergraph is a great player. Glasser is a great player. That's what makes them a good team, because they're more than just James Harden. I thought James Harden down the stretch did a great job of creating for himself and creating the plays, but on the other hand I thought Ryan Brooks did a tremendous job on him throughout the game. He shot 1-for-8. If you would have told us that James Harden would have ended up with nine points and I would have had 20 points and we lost the game, I would have thought you were crazy.
But I thought it was a hard fought game and I thought both teams played to the best of their abilities.

Q. Ryan was talking about the defensive effort you had today and you did a lot good defensively. I don't think they had an offensive rebound in the first half. It always seemed like they were able to find a shot when they needed to sort of stem a run by you guys. It's just one of those things that they had the rolls and you didn't today?
DIONTE CHRISTMAS: Well, Pendergraph leads the country in field-goal percentage, and he makes a lot of tough shots. I thought he did a great job today, especially when the time was right and they did a great job of getting him the ball, and I thought good position on Lavoy and Serge. I thought Lavoy and Serge did a great job, as well, but I thought he did a great job at making some shots. He's definitely a great leader for that program, and he did a great job today I thought. But when the shot clock went down, I thought they did a great job just getting Pendergraph the ball and making tough shots. I thought we did a great job of contesting and just getting a hand in those guys' face but they did a great job of just making a lot of tough shots today.

Q. Coach, what was your assessment of the way things went offensively down the stretch for you?
COACH FRAN DUNPHY: I thought we had a couple of really great looks, the ball just did not go in the basket. Semaj took it to the basket one time and Lavoy got a great offensive rebound. I thought he was gonna make that stick-back. I thought we had some very good looks at the basket, it just didn't happen for us. Some of that is us and some of that is Arizona State.

Q. Ryan, you looked like you got a little frustrated toward the end of the game when Harden started getting some calls. Did you feel like your defense changed at all at that point or do you feel like maybe he was doing a better job of getting calls?
RYAN BROOKS: I don't want to place the game in the refs' hands and go to the refs for calls, but I think that one stretch you're talking about is down the stretch, I thought I did a good job and possibly got a five-second call, trying to work hard to get position, and I thought I was there. But the ref thought otherwise and made the call that he thought was the right call.
You know, it's over now, we've just got to move on. But I thought it still was an all-around good team effort and just didn't come out with the win.

Q. Dionte, kind of a similar question: Did you get any explanation what they saw on that travel, on the call?
DIONTE CHRISTMAS: No, like he said, we're trying not to put the game in the ref's hands. If that's what the ref saw, that's what he saw. You can't go back and change the call. If the ref saw a walk, then obviously it was a walk. But sometimes it comes down to that.

Q. Dionte, your last game now, three years at Temple. Could you sum it up for us?
DIONTE CHRISTMAS: Great, man. It was great, a lot of good memories, especially under Coach Dunphy. Coach Dunphy has taught me a lot about just life in general, not just about basketball. It's just been a fun time while I was here. I got two Atlantic 10 championships, two NCAA appearances. There are not too many people that can say that. It went by so fast.
And I was just telling the young guys, you've got to cherish every moment at Temple because it goes by so fast. These games, I mean, it felt like I was just at orientation last week. These last three years, man, has been great, man, the best three years of my life.
LARRY WAHL: We'll have questions for Coach Dunphy. Thank you, guys.

Q. With the way Semaj was shooting, did you feel like maybe you could get Juan more minutes, or were you afraid of giving up something on the defensive end with Juan in there?
COACH FRAN DUNPHY: Semaj tried to make some difficult shots, didn't come up with them, but he is a solid performer defensively. I thought his pressure on Glasser was something that got us back to where we needed to be in the second half. So that was certainly a concern.

Q. You went to zone. I think they got up to nine and you called a time-out and you came out in zone, and it looked like the game started to come your way a lot, right? Would you agree with that?
COACH FRAN DUNPHY: I agree. I think zone helped us in the first half of the game. But that got us back to where we needed to be. I think they had -- they were up 13 at one point in the first half, and we got it back to -- might have gotten it back to three, and then Glasser made two huge jump shots at the end of the first half.
But I would agree, zone helped us.

Q. The way they played defense and the way you guys can play defense yourself, did you anticipate a low-possession game like this? And what did that mean in terms of your shot selection that you were going to need to have?
COACH FRAN DUNPHY: Well, again, I'll be anxious to watch the film and see how many -- I thought early in the second half we had a number of really good looks that didn't happen for us. I did think it would be a low-scoring game just because they make you work on -- when we're on offense and they are not a team that runs it up and down the floor when they're on offense.

Q. Dionte's career is over, and he lost obviously the game, but he had quite a performance. I'm sure there were a lot of pro scouts in this arena that got a pretty good look at a guy who can probably play at the next level. Would you agree?
COACH FRAN DUNPHY: Well, he certainly had a fabulous career. And as far as the pro scouts are concerned, they watch so many of our games, they watch so much film, that while he had a terrific game today, I don't think it was a situation where they're all of a sudden going to say, well, Dionte Christmas has moved himself into this position. As far as they are concerned, I think he's already established himself as a player that they are looking at very carefully and closely, and I was proud of him today, but I've been proud of him for the last three years. It's a remarkable career that he has had, no question about it.
LARRY WAHL: Thank you, Coach.

Syracuse officials aren't saying much, but the talk at the American Airlines Arena in Miami is that Donovan McNabb might be dropping in to see his old college team give it the old college try in the second round of the NCAA tournament Sunday. Nice weekend for a visit to Miami, in all respects.

If he shows up, we can ask him about Andy Reid's freewheeling interview (hoo boy, hold onto your hats) with Dave Spadaro on Eaglespompom.comcom. Andy says he and Donovan talk all the time and they have a real good communication going and they're doing a real good job with all that.Donovan saw Syracuse play Villanova at the Wachovia Center earlier this month. Teammate Brian Westbrook, rooting the other way no doubt, was also at that game.During his first two seasons at Syracuse, McNabb was also essentially a walk-on to the basketball team after the end of football season. He played sparingly as a freshman on the team that lost in the 1996 championship game to Kentucky, which had as one of its stars McNabb's former Mount Carmel high school teammate, Antoine Walker. Donovan played a little more the following season before giving up the sport to concentrate on football. He played a total of 116 minutes in 18 games at Syracuse, nearly all of them as a sophomore.

Syracuse, a No. 3 seed, beat Stephen F. Austin, 59-44 in the first game on Friday and will play either a team from his professional home (Philadelphia, Temple) or his adopted home (Phoenix, Arizona State -- well, OK, Tempe) in the second round.

Temple is just taking the court for warmups as this is posted, so you probably know more about the outcome already. If the Owls shoot better than 45 percent from the floor, we'll go ahead and predict a Temple win. If not, not.  

That's the hot rumor/assumption/falsehood of the day in the continuing saga of whether the Denver Broncos will grant quarterback Jay Cutler's trade request.

Washington is allegedly trying to put together a three-team quarterback merry-go-round in which Cutler would end up in Washington, Matt Cassel in Denver and Jason Campbell in Kansas City.

The 'Skins are denying they have any intention of dumping Campbell, which shows they were paying attention when the Broncos got themselves into this mess to begin with. New coach Josh McDaniels, formerly QB coach and offensive coordinator for the Patriots, actively tried to trade Cutler for Cassel last month, didn't succeed, then lied about it.

If the Broncos do trade Cutler, it would seem logical that a 32-year-old head coach would want a young quarterback around whom to build the offense for years to come. There is no indication that gettting a veteran like Donovan McNabb would interest Denver, except perhaps as a last resort, and absolutely no indication the Eagles are contemplating making a bid for Cutler.

Out in Denver, opinion is evenly divided. In one camp, as indicated by this column written by the fabulous Dave Krieger, are the folks who say good quarterbacks are hard to find, so hold onto this one. In the other camp, as voiced in this column by Mark Kiszla, are those who don't care so much for petulant, spoiled athletes.

There's a lot of that going around.

Aside from the fact that it is a spat between guys named Jay and Josh -- which makes it sound more like an argument over a squash hinder at Dartmouth -- there is something we can all learn from the current personnel issues suffered by the Denver Broncos.

As it relates to your Philadelphia Eagles directly, there isn't much there. The chance that Andy Reid would approve or even consider any combination of draft picks and Donovan McNabb for the right to listen to Jay Cutler's whining is so slim that our local head coach would need to squint to see it.

For a good take on the latest goings-on in Denver, read the post from Sam Adams on the site InDenverTimes. We will pause for a moment to ask you to consider subscribing to the site, which is run by former Rocky Mountain News staffers, good journalists who had the poor luck to watch their newspaper fold beneath them. Hey, could happen to all of us. And I know you would support us.

Anyway, Cutler -- who has led the Broncos to zero playoff appearances -- is the anti-Donovan, in many respects. If you wish McNabb were more demonstrative over his career when it comes to taking on the organization, here's a good look at what you've been missing. It is a large ego, surrounded by a football player who has achieved exactly nothing.

And why is Cutler able to create such havoc? Because there is a new coach who doesn't have much leverage yet, so he is being tested. Those who would like to see Andy Reid move on have to remember that the next guy, whoever that might be, would need a couple years to settle into the job. And during that time, there could be chaos. And beyond that time, too.

Say what you will about Reid. Aside from the very brief 2005 acid trip that was Terrell Owens, there is never chaos here. Not a lot of Super Bowl trophies, either, one must admit. But never chaos. The inmates don't run the asylum, the rats don't chase the cat.

And nobodies like Jay Cutler don't hold a franchise hostage.

Here are a few guesses for you to work with. I won't give you VCU (11) over UCLA (6), although that is a very popular upset pick by the experts. I think the Bruins will win the game handily.

For what it's worth (and probably not much) take a look at these:

Wisconsin (12) over Florida State (5). I know. The Badgers had terrible stretches this season,  but they score well from the perimeter and won't be as affected as some teams by FSU's very strong interior defense. Bo Ryan will have them prepared. Then it's a matter of making shots.

USC (10) over Boston College (7): This might be a fake upset since Las Vegas thinks the Trojans are the better team, but it's an upset in Bracketworld. Southern Cal won the Pac-10 tournament and is on a little roll. BC is the same team that beat North Carolina this season and lost to Harvard. Anything is possible.

Utah State (11) over Marquette (6): I'm probably influenced because I saw Marquette in the Big East tournament and it was an unimpressive outing. Still, Utah State will be nearly at home under the bright lights of Boise and Marquette hasn't been the same since losing point guard Dominic James.

Not as sure about these, but would also consider Western Kentucky (12) over Illinois (5), and Mississippi State (13) over Washington (4). In fact, if that second game weren't in Portland, Ore., an easy trip for the Huskies, not so much for Miss. State, I would have included it.

Not all of these are going to come in. It never works that way. But these are the ones where the matchups look ripe for the upset. Best of luck.

The two fellows most reponsible for keeping you informed about all things Eagles -- Bob Brookover of the Inquirer and Les Bowen of the Daily News -- traveled to Deland, Fla. last week to drop in on Tra Thomas' charity golf tournament and chat up a few of the guys.

That and it was $1.99 Breakfast Special Weekend at Bob Evans.

Bob and Les, separately, talked to Tra about leaving the Eagles, talked to some of the other players who made the trip, including Jamal Jackson, Todd Herremans, Juqua Parker, Kevin Kolb and L.J. Smith, who might have been there just because it's close to Atlanta, where he's going to sign. Donovan McNabb didn't make it but he sent a text.

Everyone said pretty much the expected things. Thomas would have preferred staying with the Eagles, but that didn't work out -- due to lack of team interest, according to Thomas -- and so life will continue with the Jacksonville Jaguars.

When Brookie and Les tried to get a state-of-the-team address out of Brian Westbrook, however, or even a that's-too-bad about the departure of Brian Dawkins and Tra, Westbrook dodged the boys as if they were coming to tackle him.

Brookie kind of shrugged it off, and wrote a story, but Les took it hard, and he blogged lengthily about the difficult travel he had gone through, and the enormous output of energy required to chase around Westbrook for several days, while the running back kept changing his mind about whether he would talk, when he would talk and to whom he would talk. Les didn't say anything about the mints on the hotel pillow, but I've got a sneaking suspicion those weren't up to snuff, either.

As it turned out, BWest didn't have anything to say about the players who left the team, and really didn't have anything to say about the recent clean-out surgery done on his left knee.

Specifically, Westbrook also said he had nothing to say to the fans, and maybe that's his right. He has a sore tail about something, although it could be about Bob or Les, or Bob and Les, and Bob not Les or Les not Bob.

If you wan't the details, go find Les' blog. He'll appreciate the hits, but you'll have to wade through a lot of stuff about how tough it is to be a reporter before you get to it.

I don't know why Westbrook is in a bad mood. Could be any number of things. He's at the point of his career where it might be expected he would become something of a team leader, and be willing to speak for the locker room on issues like teammates who leave and that sort of matter. That apparently isn't the case yet, though. We'll keep waiting, especially Les.

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Huge surprise department: Looks like Leonard Weaver isn't coming to Philadelphia to don his cloak of fullback invisibility.