Ok, now it’s time to let it rest with Tiger
Before we even get started I’m a huge Tiger fan and have been from the beginning. I feel the brought a football player’s mentality to a sport that had about as much intrigue as pistols at dawn, and played by a bunch of guys with the character of people from the same age. That said, I don’t know the man and maybe he’s a snob that would tell me go to hell if I offered to buy him a beer at a sports bar. Either way it’s about time for everyone who makes a living off the misfortunes in other people’s lives to get off the bash train. More disclosure, is what he did wrong? Yes, but what is getting me is all of the self-righteous people piling on. The sad part is I think everyone with an opinion either way knows the true score, that objectively speaking, probably 80% of our favorite sports figures are guilty of the same ‘transgressions’ as TW, and this isn’t the blind 60’s where in the decades following their worship do we find that the legends of the good ol’ days weren’t always good, in fact they were down right scandalous and they wouldn’t be able to endorse cigarettes in today’s advertising environment. I mean at the end of the day, he was guilty of speeding and sleeping with someone other than his wife. He’s a pro athlete people, that’s what they do despite how we want to ‘think’ they are. I mean don’t get me wrong, I’m sure Roger Staubach, Jerry West, and Babe Ruth never strayed and are as wholesome as the memoirs and fable stated they were, but assuming that there is an iota of doubt, I take sports celebrities for what they are. Gifted athletes that can do what a handful of people of 6.76 Billion that are on it can do, and in that respect they should be admired but not adored. Barkely was right, it’s not their job to raise our kids or become and icon for them to emulate. They are just people that chose and achieved a different profession (that pays a lot more) and shouldn’t be treated any better or any worse. If TW was someone who lived on your block, it wouldn’t even make dinner table conversation so it shouldn’t lead our national news or even a sports site. It’s time to find something else.