Orlando, Fla. ? It’s not exactly a surprise when teenage girls are more grown up than NFL superstars. But when you see it play out before your eyes, you don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

In this case, I’m going to laugh. There were enough tears last week.

They started with Terrell Owens, the Eagles’ ever-talented, ever-tortured receiver.

He said he wanted to renegotiate his contract. He accused the Eagles of trying to turn Philadelphia against him. Then he said he wasn’t the “guy who got tired in the Super Bowl.”

Maybe Owens considers that a bargaining chip in contract talks. But it sure came off as an insult to Donovan McNabb. He’d done nothing but support T.O., not to mention toss him 14 touchdowns.

Owens’ media blitz peaked on MSNBC, when he recalled his hard-working grandmother and began to weep. The beauty was he kept sobbing through his contract talk and the standard jock line about how he’s just looking out for his family’s security. As if the $9 million he made last year isn’t enough to keep any little T.O.s off the school-lunch program.

“No matter what anybody else says about me,” Owens sniffed, “my family comes first.”

If you didn’t know better — and you don’t — you’d think he was angling for a Kleenex commercial. Hey, he got a Sharpie deal after pulling one out of his sock.

T.O.-like tripe flows so regularly from pro athletes these days, you get numb to it. Unless you get lucky and stumble upon genuine sporting tears.

I didn’t exactly feel lucky going to a girls high-school lacrosse match Friday night at Lake Brantley, Fla. It was a semi-obligation, so I smiled and figured it had to be less boring than soccer.

It was. The game was also the last game for seniors, and about a dozen girls got up afterward and read goodbye speeches to a crowd small enough to fit inside T.O.’s garage.

Somewhere in every speech, each girl had to stop and try not to cry. Most of them failed.

“This sounds so corny,” one girl said, wiping her tears.

The grownups were too misty-eyed to care. They were probably thinking about how quickly their little girls had grown up. I couldn’t help thinking about how guys like Owens seem unable to.

There are a billion light-years between high-school lacrosse fields and NFL stadiums. But both fall under the general heading of sports. And as corny as it sounds, some traits are always supposed to be there.

Four years of lacrosse couldn’t have all been a lovefest, but you didn’t hear any of the girls say they weren’t “the one who got tired in the state playoffs last year.” They obviously respect each other, their coaches and the whole concept of team. And they would unquestionably put their families first.

Course, none of the girls signed a $49 million deal, starred in the Super Bowl and then realized how underpaid, under-loved and perpetually misunderstood they are.

It’s enough to make a supposedly grown man cry. It’s also enough to make you wish he’d have spent Friday night at a high-school lacrosse game.

Maybe he would have realized the difference between the tears of a sportsman and the tears of a clown.