NEW YORK (AP) -- The NFL Players Association wants
the Philadelphia Eagles to cut Terrell Owens if
they're not going to reinstate him after his four-game
suspension is over.

"We're not asking them to play him, we can't force
them to do that," Gene Upshaw, the NFLPA's executive
director, said Wednesday. "But if they're not going to
let him come back to practice and do all the other
things associated with that, then we want them to cut
him, let him become a free agent now."

The union already has appealed the four-game
suspension levied on the wide receiver by the Eagles
for what coach Andy Reid called "a large number of
situations that accumulated over a long period of
time."

The appeal will be heard before arbitrator Richard
Bloch on Nov. 18.

But Upshaw said that even if the suspension is upheld,
the Eagles can't just tell Owens to stay away from the
team and its practice facility.

"We are taking the position that's additional
punishment," Upshaw told The Associated Press. "It's
not fair to a player not to have an additional
chance."

Upshaw differentiated between the Eagles' suspension
of Owens and Tampa Bay's decision two years ago to
make Keyshawn Johnson inactive for the final six games
of the season. Johnson signed in 2004 with Dallas, for
whom he now plays.

"There was no suspension there. A team has the right
to inactivate a player for whatever reason it wants,"
he said. "But in T.O.'s case, this is a team
suspension, not a commissioner's deal. They're
different. When we bargained in those rules, there was
a reason for it. The most a player can be suspended is
four games. You can't go beyond that."



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