Tiger Woods, Y'all

Since Tiger Woods, world’s best golfer and amateur pornstar, is giving a press conference tomorrow to address his recent absence from golf and his stint in rehab for sex addiction (I think he went the sex route instead of the drugs/alcohol route because he wanted to stay in shape), I figured I’d post this little article I wrote a few weeks ago. It was published in Penn State New Ken’s student newspaper simply because my brother is the sports editor. I’ve been working on my networking skills. Some of it was changed for the print edition, though. (One of these changes I’m told was the 86ing of “sex-addicted Ambien freak”)

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I’m sure everyone remembers the first couple of weeks after Thanksgiving, when Tiger Woods was getting so much media coverage that I can’t even remember any of the news events that were transpiring at that time that actually mattered.

He was, of course, getting all of this attention because he’d cheated on his wife with a very impressive amount of women. Actually, he was getting something like 10 times the amount of attention for being an unfaithful husband who was beaten with a golf club by his spouse than he did when he won the 2001 Masters and became the first golfer ever to hold all four major titles at one time (which solidified him as probably the greatest golfer to ever live).

The thing was, though, that I didn’t care at all whether Woods was faithful to his wife or was coupling with more women than I’ve even hugged in my entire lifetime, because that’s not the reason I know who the man is. That reason is golf (and Buick commercials).

This might make me seem like I’m very insensitive to the problem of cheating, but I assure you I’m not, and would never condone such behavior. I’m just insensitive to whether or not Tiger Woods is cheating, because it’s not even remotely my business, and the lack of marital bliss in his life has no effect on me whatsoever. The man doesn’t make millions of dollars to be a poster child for a happy marriage.

Think about it: If I was married and went and nailed 15 women, I wouldn’t even get an article written about me in any publication, and I know people will argue that this is because I’m not famous, which means I’m not really a role model on any large scale. This is true. This is also exactly why Woods shouldn’t get coverage for being a sex-addicted Ambien freak. We see all of the news about him cheating on his wife, and it doesn’t make us want to cheat on ours, but the media and the public must keep in mind that there are little kids who look up to their favorite athletes and strive to do the things they do (and I’m no exception, when I was in the sixth grade I wanted to get corn rows because I had a severe man-crush on Allen Iverson). This is why these things should be kept quiet.

By devoting so much copy and airtime to these athletes who make bad social/legal/familial decisions, the media effectively reverses some of the principles that have been pounded into today’s youths’ heads since they were extremely young: It’s not okay to cheat on your wife, but the best golf player in the world has done it. It’s not okay to cheat on your wife with your best friend and teammate, impregnate her and then have an abortion, but one of the best soccer players in the world has done it. (I’m speaking of John Terry of Chelsea and the England National Team. When news of his affair broke earlier this week, it came to light that a judge in England had actually given Terry an injunction to kill the story so it wouldn’t become a public spectacle, which is a ridiculous strike against free speech, but maybe a good idea. Obviously this injunction was overturned, or I wouldn’t know about these happenings.) It’s not okay to leave your wife for Madonna and eventually Kate Hudson—though this is arguable—but Alex Rodriguez, one of the best living baseball players and a winner of the2009 World Series, did. And it’s certainly not okay to smoke marijuana, because it apparently makes you stupid and will have negative affects on whatever you’d like to do with your life, but the greatest swimmer (and maybe Olympian) to ever live did.

Knowing these things about some of the world’s best athletes doesn’t benefit anyone, really. All it does is damage their reputation, and any sensible adult shouldn’t be worried about what an athlete’s personal life’s shortcomings entail. They should watch them play sports, and realize that they’re paid absurdly high amounts of money to do only that and nothing else, whether it’s fair or not. I can almost guarantee there has never been a sports contract that included a penalty for cheating on one’s spouse. If they do something wrong, it should be treated like it would be if a normal person did something wrong, which is to say it would get no attention. I realize the media is a watchdog and ambassador of truth and everything, but these kinds of unimportant things should stay under wraps. You know, for the kids.

And I guess I just spent this entire article giving them even more attention, so maybe I should practice what I preach.