Tiger might be impossible to root for

The next act of Tiger Woods’ career will be just as dramatic as the first one, but it will have little to do with the number of majors he wins or the amount of money he earns. What the Masters proved over the weekend was that no matter how much success Woods has on the golf course, he’ll never again have the chance to be the heroic sports figure. There will be no more tears shed for him. He can’t have what Phil Mickelson has. He spent the first act nailing everything in sight and now wherever he goes, the media and the public will take great joy trying to nail him.

It’s not just that Woods will never be able to stand near a woman again without the entire world speculating that he’s relapsed; it’s also that he can never swear, never even raise his voice, without everyone calling him a fraud. Just before the tournament began last week, he promised that he was going to try to control his attitude o, the golf course. By Friday, he was back to being the old Tiger, chastising himself after a couple of misguided shots. He’s always been like this. The difference now is that even though his vulgar language has nothing to do with the number of women he slept with, the two will always go hand-in-hand. Every time something negative happens to him, he’ll be treated as though he fell off the wagon and back into bed with another blonde waitress.

That’s how it will be for Tiger in 2010 and beyond. That’s the next act. He might still be the best golfer in the world, but what makes him so captivating is the idea that he could blow up at any minute and chances are a camera will be there to catch it.

There was this false notion on Thursday afternoon that when Tiger approached the first tee, the crowd was cheering for him. They weren’t. They were cheering for themselves. They were cheering because they were a part of a moment that will always be remembered in sports. It had everything to do with Tiger, but it was not a sign of all the fans suddenly forgiving him for his mistakes. Of course it was sold that way. There was even a story on ESPN about a guy who asked another fan to move over so his teenage daughters could watch Woods tee-off. How touching. For some reason, the World Wide Leader decided to follow Nike’s plan and attempted to make Tiger the sympathetic figure.

That all changed as soon as the real sympathetic figure started to charge up the leader board. Right when it became clear that Mickelson might be able to win the whole thing, the focus on Tiger shifted. No longer were we hearing about Woods signing autographs (something he never does) for fans or how relaxed he looked. Now the questions about the pressure being too much took over. And the swearing led to the most important question of all:

Has Tiger Woods really changed?

Obviously, it’s too early to tell. But Woods has no one to blame for this but himself. He was obligated to promise that his behavior off the course would be different. He didn’t have to address anything about his actions off the course. Now, whether he likes it or not, the two will go hand-in-hand.

Which just makes it all the more difficult for anyone to actually root for him.

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What did Tiger accomplish by speaking?

The following is just a small collection of events that took the place between the night Tiger Woods’ life changed forever and last Friday morning when he spoke to the world and said nothing.

President Obama announced the United States would be sending 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan and in the next breath, accepted the Nobel Peace Prize. Washington Wizards star Gilbert Arenas brought three guns into the locker room, which led to a season-long suspension and possibly jail time down the road. One of the worst natural disasters in history decimated Haiti. We met Scott Brown. The New Orleans Saints won the Super Bowl.

Plenty of major news stories. None of which had a lifespan much longer than your average Paris Hilton relationship.

Woods outlasted everything. The New York Post featured him on its front page for a record 20 consecutive days. 9/11 didn’t even get that type of coverage. He was all anyone wanted to talk about from Thanksgiving weekend on through Christmas and New Year’s and into February. But things were starting to settle down. The story was dying.

And then he decided to speak.

He handled his speech (it was a speech, not a press conference) with the same obsessive-compulsive attention to detail that made him the world’s greatest golfer and also what allowed him to cheat for that long with that many women and not get caught. No part of the day could go unscripted, so if you thought the State of Tiger Address sounded like it had been prepared by the guys from The West Wing, you’re probably right.

Everything was planned. The people in the room. The hug for mom. The two camera angles. Even the part of his speech where he tore into the media for following around his wife and daughter was probably written in all caps so he could remember to sound angry.

The problem is, Tiger really had nothing to say. He basically read a statement similar to the one that appeared on his website in December and he didn’t answer the one question we all had: When will you be back?

“I do plan to return to golf one day,” he said. “I just don't know when that day will be. I don't rule out that it will be this year. “

And the world stopped for that?

He offered nothing new. That may very well have been the goal. If he truly believes he can repair his marriage, his return to golf might not matter to him all that much. Some have speculated that this was one of his 12 steps – making amends. Maybe he just wanted to show the world that his wife didn’t decapitate him on Thanksgiving night. Or maybe he was doing it for his sponsors.

All we do know is that Woods was back at the center of the news cycle without actually delivering any news. He talked about trying to reconcile his marriage and wanting a little privacy, but it’s difficult to believe Friday’s production helped accomplish any of that. How could it? It just puts more pressure on him and keeps all of us wondering when or if we will see him again.

We all knew questions were off limits on Friday.

But we still could have used some answers.

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Bad guys with bad contracts beware

He was a media darling. Someone even the most cynical writers in America couldn’t help but root for. He was different. He was a breath of fresh air. Behind the natural athletic ability there was a compelling story of hard work and sacrifice that made him a fan favorite, not just locally, but throughout the country.

Now he’s no different than the rest of ‘em. The same people who got a kick out of his style, the ones who called him good for the game, are saying he’s a thug. Now he’s just another rich, coddled superstar who thinks he can get away with anything because of who he is.

No, not Tiger.

Gilbert.

Gilbert Arenas’ fall from grace is different from Tiger Woods’ because it has been gradual, not all of a sudden. But other athletes should be paying a lot closer attention to what happens with Arenas because his situation is a lot more likely to happen to them. And it has nothing to do with guns in the locker room either.

It’s about bad contracts, and there are plenty out there in every major sport.

The decline of Arenas began long before he ever thought about bringing his guns to work to either A) hide from his children, B) play a joke on teammate Javaris Crittenton, C) intimidate Crittenton, or D) some combination of the three. It started as soon as he signed a six year, $111 million contract with the Washington Wizards in the summer of 2008. The deal was heavily criticized because of his persistent injury problems, which cost him the end of the 2006/07 season, virtually all of the following season, and most of his first year with the new contract.

It didn’t help that shortly after Arenas signed, our country began to feel the wrath of a financial meltdown that is still hurting us today. Suddenly just being the most loved athlete in the blogosphere wasn’t enough for the Wizards. Arenas was quickly labeled as having one of the worst contracts in the league, with many writers comparing it to the similarly disastrous deal the team gave Juwan Howard a little over a decade ago.

So when the team officials learned that Arenas stored unloaded guns in his locker at the Verizon Center, they saw this as the perfect opportunity to get out of a contract that would haunt them for the next five years.

That’s the part of the story that has been underreported. But it’s also the most relevant to all athletes who have signed huge contracts and are either not producing or playing for a franchise that happens to be losing money. The Wizards immediately reported Arenas’ indiscretions to the league not because they thought it was the right thing to do, but because they want to be able to invoke the morality clause which appears in all NBA contracts. Do you think this ever makes the news if the Wizards were in first place and Arenas was the league’s leading scorer?

How do you think rumors of a card game gone awry leaked anyway? It was no mistake that the New York Post had the most scandalous --and incorrect-- version of the story, claiming that Arenas and Crittenton actually drew guns on each other. The Wizards knew the Post would have no problem running a story with no facts behind it.

They also knew there was no way the public would side with Arenas if they tried to void his contract. Gilbert Arenas with three guns in the locker room in Washington D.C. might sound more like some sports version of Clue, but the people of Washington know guns are no game. That’s why the region has the strictest gun laws in the country.

Arenas is far from innocent here. But it’s also wrong to label him a typical NBA thug. The truth is, he’s guilty mainly of being an idiot, which some might argue is enough to cancel the remainder of his contact. I would disagree, but I guarantee this won’t be the last time you hear about a team attempting to invoke the morality clause.

If the Wizards are allowed the sever ties with Arenas, you can bet that every team in sports will try to do the same with their problematic players.

Just the rich ones, of course.

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Tiger, it appears, is not who we thought he was

Let the Tiger Woods saga serve as a warning to the next wave of athletes who seek to become bigger than the sport they play, the LeBron James’ of the world, who calculate every move they make in hopes of maintaining the squeaky clean image it takes to become a global icon.

You can’t be Bono when you act like Gene Simmons.

A story involving an athlete or any celebrity and an alleged mistress (or three) doesn’t normally become the most talked about story in the world. They’re not exactly rare. Besides, if you ask the average person, chances are they’ll say it all comes with the territory when you’re famous. It might not be right, but that’s just what happens. And don’t we have more important things to worry about?

Of course we do. But on the same day that our President announced he would be sending an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan, the most-searched topic on the New York Times website was “Tiger Woods.” On Google’s list of hot trends for Tuesday, December 1st, Woods or names associated with the rumors circulating about Woods appeared six times before any mention of the military. So while it would be completely fitting for Sports Illustrated to file our infatuation with this story under its “This Week’s Sign of Apocalypse” headline, the fact remains, it does matter.

And that’s entirely because of what Tiger is supposed to represent. He’s portrayed as not somebody we should wish to be, but someone we should strive to be. Everyone knows his story. He came from that American Dream of a family, with the father who pushed him to be great and the mother who would have loved him no matter what. He’s the guy who made the very most of his god-given abilities, the kid who was famous by age three and a global icon by the time he turned 21. And he did it all while playing a game most people with his skin color will never have the chance to try.

All of those things are still true today. But now his image is taking a hit thanks to rumors about a mistress in New York and a cocktail waitress in Los Angeles and another woman in Vegas. But the public isn’t turning on Woods because of his alleged infidelity. We can handle that. It’s that we feel betrayed by someone we want to love.

By design, the man has lived in a bubble his entire public life. He declines most interviews, choosing to release statements on his website instead. He never takes a stance on any issue, be it large or small. And until now, he’s been far more likely to appear in the Wall Street Journal than in the National Enquirer. Put simple, he has acted more like a President than a famous athlete. And we’ve trusted him as such.

If these allegations prove true, Tiger has let us all down.

Never forget that Woods private nature was a page right out of Michael Jordan’s playbook. Jordan didn’t trust the media either. He had a very tight circle of friends. He always put endorsements ahead of world views. But everyone knew that you could always find MJ at the nearest casino with a couple women on each arm and a cigar in his mouth. We’ve never seen Tiger act like that, so we’ve always held him to an even higher standard.

That’s what the next generation of great athletes needs to keep in mind. We’re looking at you LeBron. You can’t deny us any access and party in excess and expect no one to notice. The truth is, we’d much rather see you turn up on Page Six than in the police blotter. What bothers us is when you pretend to be something you’re not.

That’s when the public turns on you.

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Random Rumblings: Look on the bright side, Red Sox Nation

Wasn’t 2004 supposed to lift the weight off of Red Sox Nation? After winning for the first time in 86 years, weren’t fans expected to halt their whining when things stopped going the team’s way? Maybe it was the second World Series that did them in, that got them too comfortable with being on top, because it has become clear that the Nation is more panic-ridden than ever.

Reaching the playoffs in baseball is more difficult than in any other sport, and if the season were to end today, the Sox would be heading to Los Angeles as the American League Wild Card winners despite…

*A pitching staff once considered the deepest in baseball that now runs thinner than any team over .500 in the sport.

*A top slugger who picked 2009 as the year he wanted to go clean for the first time since he was sitting the bench in Minnesota.

*A catcher who last year didn’t have the bat to break your beer-league softball lineup and this year doesn’t even have the arm. No one is talking about his game-calling ability this year, by the way.

*The 2008 AL MVP hitting the sophomore slump in his junior year in baseball.

*The closer allowing more base runners than he’s ever allowed before.

*The 18 game winner a year ago that won just once before the team realized he was too out-of-shape to even bother using.

*The combination of Julio Lugo, Jed Lowrie, Nick Green and whoever else played shortstop this season.

I could go on forever, but the fact remains if simply getting to October should ever be good-enough for Red Sox Nation again, 2009 is that year.

• You can slam Rick Pitino all you want. Call him an embarrassment to his family. Label him a baby killer. But if he walked into your house to recruit your kid, you’d melt for him the way Turtle did for Tom Brady on Entourage last week.
  
  And if you did actually hold your ground and spit on Pitino, he’d just go right to the next kid on his list and chances are it would be your son that loses in the end.
  
  
• Notice that you hear nothing about Vince Young when plays well, as he did last night in the Titans second preseason game. It seems to me Young has been labeled in such a way that he will actually have to be a Hall of Famer to ever be liked in the NFL.
  
  How unfortunate. Young isn’t a puppy-killer or worse yet, a drunk-driving murderer like other guys in the NFL. He’s not getting arrested three times a year or shooting himself in the foot in night clubs. He’s simply the victim of overhype, much like two other prominent players in his draft class, Reggie Bush and Matt Leinart.
  
  
• It’s crazy to think that 89 years after a ball player named Ray Chapman died from a pitch to the head, we still have players getting hurt the same way today. In the last century, we’ve figured out how to juice the balls, the bats and god knows the players. Why haven’t we juiced the helmet yet?
  
  
• I’m not Tiger Woods’ biggest fan by any means. But I enjoy dominance in sports and there is perhaps no more of a sure-thing than when Tiger heads into Sunday leading a Major. I hope that continues today and forever so that I can say that even though I grew up in a time when sports was littered with cheaters and drug addicts and criminals, I got to watch the single most dominant athlete in history.

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Random Rumblings: Greedy athletes aren't the only villains

• If greedy athletes are ruining sports, then what are selfish Americans doing to the country?
  
  The question comes to mind because of what took place in Providence this past weekend, when the city hosted the United States Conference of Mayors, bringing leaders from cities all over the country together to discuss the country’s most-pressing issues and how to best go about addressing them.
  
  It was supposed to be a chance for Providence to enter the national spotlight, to prove that it is now the Creative Capital, not the Corruption Capital that it once was. But instead, a shortsighted, self-centered group of people decided to use this opportunity to attempt to expose the city’s Mayor as a union-hating scoundrel. As a result, a number of top officials elected not to attend the event, including Vice President Joe Biden, which undoubtedly left the city’s hotels and restaurants in a bind.
  
  The Providence Firefighters have been working without a contract for almost 1,500 days, which obviously is unfortunate. But it’s not as though they haven’t been offered a contract that is far stronger than any other city employee has and it gave them no right to protest the entire event. Providence Mayor David Cicilline has been more than fair with these egomaniacal individuals, and they refuse to sign a contract because they expect more. In a state that has an 11.3 percent unemployment rate, a rising homeless population and a $400 million budget deficit, the city’s firefighters continue to want.
  
  How pathetic. When a professional athlete does something like this, they are portrayed as the villain and everyone turns against them. Well, what the PFD is doing hits much closer to Main Street, as the President likes to say, and they deserve to be treated the same way.
  
• Now back to the world of sports…
  
  Everyone wants to talk about where Kobe Bryant ranks among the greatest basketball players of all-time, but here’s a more interesting question for you: Where does Kobe rank among all athletes from this generation.
  
  I put Tiger and Roger Federer well ahead of everyone. After that, I say it goes Tim Duncan, Tom Brady and then a tie between Shaquille O'Neal and Bryant. Honorable mentions: Derek Jeter and Michael Phelps.
  
  
• And you know who might be the most overrated athlete of the entire generation? Brett Favre, who is going to end up quarterbacking the Vikings right out of playoff contention this season.
  
  
• Speaking of Shaq, I don’t care who ends up acquiring him, they need to bench him for the first 40 games of the season at least. Give him the Roger Clemens treatment. No league has a more irrelevant regular season than the NBA, and if we assume that Shaq will end up on a playoff team anyway, why not make sure he’s at his best in May?
  
  
• Just when the media decides to attack bloggers for assuming guilt when it comes to steroids in baseball, we learn that Sammy Sosa tested positive in 2003. Ironically, the most common response from everyone was, “well we all knew that already.”
  
  
• Because I’m a gambling man, I’ll take Tiger over the field this weekend at the U.S. Open.

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Random Rumblings: When Tiger loses, so does golf

• Something I realized this weekend while watching the Masters: As exciting as it is to watch Tiger Woods win, it’s equally as boring to watch him lose. And that, even more than Woods never having a real rival, is the biggest problem with the sport of golf. It doesn’t matter if the Yankees are losing to the Marlins or the Red Sox; they’re still entertaining. Same goes for the Cowboys, Lakers or Duke Basketball. The best teams provide compelling stories either way.
  
  But when Tiger is failing, the sky is falling for golf. Rather than appreciating those playing better than him on the sport’s biggest stage, we attempt to figure out how he could persevere, constructing what-if scenarios more complicated than the BCS. Woods didn’t just need to be perfect to reach the top of the leaderboard on Sunday; he also needed a number of guys to fall flat on their face, which is actually quite similar to college football’s system.
  
  But once it was clear that he wasn’t going to be good enough this time around, we didn’t continue to watch those who bested him; we turned off our televisions. And the only reason we even know who beat Tiger is the three-way playoff - guys could be captivated by the Westminster Dog Show if it went to overtime. Otherwise, we would have had no clue who won golf’s Super Bowl in 2009.
  
  
• For the record, had Tiger or Phil Mickelson managed to make the comeback from down seven strokes heading into Sunday, it would have been equivalent to coming back from a 3-0 deficit in a seven game series.
  
  But it still wouldn’t have been the best come-from-behind victory of the weekend. That honor belongs to Boston University, who won the NCAA hockey championship by scoring two goals in the final minute of the third period to tie Miami University, and then a goal in overtime to clinch it.
  
  
• It has been a rough couple of days for the baseball world, first with the tragic death of Nick Adenhart and today losing Phillies broadcaster Harry Kalas and former Tigers pitcher Mark Fidrych. But while it may have just been Kalas’ time to go and Fidrych’s death appears to have been a freak accident, it’s hard not to just get angrier at what happened to Adenhart as more details emerge.
  
  Adenhart and two of his friends were killed when a drunk named Andrew Thomas Gallo ran a red light and plowed into their car. But this was no accident. In the past three years, Gallo has pleaded guilty to drunk driving and was also arrested for public intoxication. Gallo is clearly a man with a serious illness, but that problem is alcoholism, not driving under the influence. People aren’t addicted to drunken driving and we tend to forget that.
  
  That’s why we need even stricter drunk driving laws and we need them to be enforced more. If you make the decision to get behind the wheel after having too many drinks, you should go to jail and you should never be allowed to drive again.
  
  That’s a statement, and maybe it will scare some folks straight.
  
  
• Call me crazy, but I really like the idea of Isiah Thomas as a college coach. His players will love him and he’s sleazy enough to make a good recruiter. By all accounts, he’s a pretty charming guy so he’ll win over boosters. And best of all, he’s not dealing with money…unless you know, the kid is that good.
  
  
• The opening week of baseball season was great because Verizon was offering the Extra Innings package for free. It was so interesting to listen to the announcers of teams playing the Yankees, Mets and Red Sox. They see things much differently and clearly can’t stand the big market franchises. For example, at one point during a Royals/Yankees game, Andy Pettite fired a questionable strike and you just know that over on the YES Network, Michael Kay was calling him a gritty veteran who has worked for that call.
  
  But there was Royals announcer Denny Matthews offering up this slice of brilliance: “Some might say Pettite has earned that call, but not me.”
  
  
• Jacoby Ellsbury has about a month to start hitting. If he doesn’t, I think he’ll join Melky Cabrera and Ian Kennedy on the list of overhyped young ball players who only reach “top prospect” status because they play in a big market.
  
  
• Yes, I picked those Mets to win the World Series, the team with guys dropping routine flyballs, the team with one trustworthy pitcher, the team with a closer who is either unwilling or incapable of throwing strikes. Yes I picked those guys.

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Random Rumblings

• If you have ever been in a relationship where you have put off breaking up with a girl and then just when you have finally made the decision to go through with it, she comes through with amazing plans or a nice gift, then you know exactly what Omar Minaya is going through with Willie Randolph right now.
  
  Every time it seems like Randolph is in his last day as manager of the Mets, his team seems to come through with a victory that keeps him clinging to the job. That trend may continue today if the team can sweep a double header from Texas. If not, Minaya may have to part ways with the guy he selected for the job on Father’s Day, of all days.
  
  Looks like the end of this relationship is going be even harder than he thought.
  
  
• I understand that it has become harder than ever to win big consistently in college basketball, but it’s sad to see Jim Calhoun lower his standards so much in an attempt to get the University of Connecticut back to where it was during my senior year in high school. His latest recruit, Nate Miles played at five different high schools and it took the NCAA six months of investigating his transcripts just to clear him.
  
  The guy he’ll replace is Stanley Robinson, who, coincidentally, is expected to be academically ineligible.
  
  Both Calhoun and football coach Randy Edsall have complained in the past that UConn’s admission standards are too high and that it has an effect on recruiting. Clearly, the top ranked public school in New England is now meeting their needs.
  
  
• LeBron James once said his goal is to become a global icon. He might as well have said he wants to be Tiger Woods. There is nothing like the coverage Tiger demands during a major, not even a Celtics/Lakers NBA Finals.
  
  
• Even if they win a championship this year and finish their respective careers in Boston, it’s going to be difficult to remember Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen as Celtics.
  
  Paul Pierce, on the other hand, might end up getting his jersey retired.
  
  
• Give me the Little League World Series over the College World Series any day.

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