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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A classic Super Bowl as NFL braces for the worst

“Just as the Saints had carried the people through their terrible, difficult times, the fans now turned out to carry the Saints. For forty years, through good times and bad, New Orleans had always stuck by its team. Tonight would be no exception. They came together and rallied around these all-too-human beings, their beloved Saints, just when they needed it most.”

Those words were written by Alan Donnes at the end of his 2007 book, Patron Saints. They describe the sentiments of New Orleans Saints’ fans following the team’s heartbreaking loss in the 2007 NFC Championship Game, just a year and a half after Hurricane Katrina destroyed the city.

The final chapter has now been written.


Let’s hope NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell reads the book or gets the picture or whatever it takes to realize just how good he has it and just how much stands to change if the 2011 season is lost due to a lockout.

Goodell got everything he could ask for last night on the world’s largest stage. For once, sports turned out to be everything they’re supposed to be. Even though the 14 point difference was the widest of any Super Bowl since 2003, the game appeared headed for overtime –and a huge controversy— deep into the fourth quarter. In the end, Drew Brees and the Saints proved to be the best Super Bowl story since Joe Namath led another underdog to a championship 43 years ago.

Isn’t it strange to think that such an exciting game had very little buzz over the past two weeks? For awhile, it looked as though this might be the Super Bowl remembered more for a commercial featuring a college quarterback who might never get a chance to play in the big game or for Michael Irvin and Warren Sapp, the two former stars who allegedly can’t keep their hands off women.

But what everyone failed to take into account was just how popular football is. Focus on the Family can’t ruin the Super Bowl. A couple of clowns who still want to live the athlete’s life can’t either.

The only thing that can ruin the Super Bowl is if the game doesn’t get played at all.

And that’s what we’re looking at as we head into an uncapped year. Next season will be fine. But if we’re to believe NFL Player’s Association Executive Director DeMaurice Smith, the following season is seriously in doubt. Asked what the likelihood of a lockout last week, Smith didn’t hesitate to express his concern.

“On a scale of 1 to 10, it's a 14," he said. "I keep coming back to an economic model in America that is unparalleled -- and that makes it incredibly difficult to then come to players and say, on average, each of you needs to take a $340,000 pay cut to save the National Football League. Tough sell. Tough sell."

Indeed it is.

And guess what? Unlike what happened in baseball in 1994, the fans are going to side with the players.

This won’t be a case of greedy athletes just trying to grab every penny they can. Not when you have a leader like Smith, who is willing to tell the world about the demands from both sides. Smith said the league’s owners want players to take an 18 percent pay cut and they want players to accept only 41 percent of applied revenues, down from the current 59 percent.

At a time when everyone is finally starting to open their eyes and realize how dangerous the game of football is, the owners think the player’s deserve less. And they know that even if there is a lockout, they will still make $5 billion from the league’s television contracts.

Goodell can’t allow this to get any uglier. On almost all other fronts, he has been the model commissioner. But if 2011 winds up a year filled with replacement players or –dare I say—no football at all, everything will change.

All he has to do is keep this thing running.

Or he risks becoming Bud Selig.

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Why shouldn't Kobe be considered the best ever?

A group for my old little league recently popped up on Facebook and it’s only a matter of time before the “my generation was better than your generation” argument starts and the entire city begins to weigh in. That’s just how my hometown is. Bar fights break out over things like this. West Haven children memorize City Champions first, and then if there’s time, they get to the Presidents of the United States. In all seriousness, I’m pretty sure the City Council has devoted an entire meeting to discussing the fastest pitchers in history.

(Note: My name wouldn’t appear on that list, but I did have a nice curveball.)

It’s important to note that the debate is never over the best team. If you won a championship, then you won a championship and no one can ever take that away from you. It’s always about the players who were in your league at the time you played. So take the best five players from my time versus the best five players from your time and then we get into it. That’s why fights happen. Because I’m not just defending my honor, I’m defending the honor of guys I haven’t seen in 20 years.

These arguments exist, of course, because no one wants to slight their own generation. It’s not just little league teams, although in small towns that might be the most pressing issue. It’s television shows and music and movies and life in general. I find these debates laughable. It’s not that I hate history, but I’m sorry, I’ll take the advancements in my time over any other era in history. Card catalogs sucked. Newspapers ads sucked. Encyclopedias sucked, and they were heavy. Amazon, Craig’s List and Google win. Every time.

And I haven’t even mentioned DVR and On the Go products yet.

The reason I bring all of this up is because Kobe Bryant just became the all time leading scorer in Los Angeles Lakers history, which has led the sports media to debate whether or not he is the greatest player in franchise history.

Across the board, the answer has been no.

Depending on who you talk to, the top three seems to be some combination of Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Wilt Chamberlain. The old white guys usually put Jerry West in there and Elgin Baylor typically gets thrown in the conversation as well. Only then does Kobe join the party. No matter where he ranks, it’s pretty impressive to be included with those guys at all. But why can’t he be considered the best ever? Why is it so hard to put a guy playing in a far more competitive NBA atop the list?

He’s the best player on the planet at a time when basketball players are the best athletes on the planet. That wasn’t the case 20 years ago, let alone 40. He’s bigger, stronger and faster than his predecessors and he’s playing in a league that is significantly bigger, stronger and faster than it has ever been. The old guard likes to complain about expansion diluting the NBA. I choose to believe $100 million dollar contracts made it more competitive. The money made basketball more desirable to young people over the past two decades, which has made the talent pool that much larger.

Sports, and this goes back to whole little league topic, is one the few places where you can’t even have a civil conversation comparing past to present. It gets too emotional. For example, you might say Happy Days is the greatest show in history, but you have to concede that it would have been nicer to watch in high definition. There is no concession in sports. People will always argue that their favorite player growing up was a lot better than anyone playing today.

Which is why in a column praising Kobe for becoming the all time leading scorer in team history, Los Angeles Times columnist Bill Plaschke still chose to criticize him for being too much of a ball hog. Whatever it takes to put the stars of today down, right?

But guess what?

Kobe is HD. He is the iPod. He is the internet.

Evolution wins.

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Questions surround Tebow's Super Bowl ad

Here’s hoping Tim Tebow turns out to be just another dumb jock who will do anything to market himself and profit from his fame. That he’s just another member of the fraternity of athletes living in an alternate reality where it’s completely acceptable to lie, cheat and screw anyone you want because rules just don’t apply to you. Call it the Manny Being Manny world where athletes are deemed to foolish to even comprehend the consequences of their actions.

That’s the only way he could possibly get a pass for being in a Super Bowl commercial paid for by Focus on the Family, the controversial anti-abortion, anti-gay organization founded by James Dobson. If he were mindless enough to believe that this group just wanted to give his family the opportunity tell their beautiful story to the world or if he were careless enough not to understand exactly what the organization stands for, then he might deserve to be cut a little slack.

But that’s not how Tebow has ever been portrayed. Not by the media, not by Dan Shanoff, the obsessed editor of timteblog.com and certainly not by himself. Tebow is supposed to be everything that’s right in college sports, an eloquent, good-looking kid who puts his faith above all else. He’s the kid who considers the platform he’s been given as a football player far more important than his Heisman Trophy or two national championships.

But his alliance with Focus on the Family changes that perception. Now Tebow comes off as calculating, if not manipulative.

Now he’s the kid who doesn’t just want to spread his faith to everyone, but wants to do it by partnering with an organization that is very clear about what they stand for and what they think everyone else should believe in. That doesn’t just mean being pro-life. It means treating gays as though they have a disease that needs to be cured.

The truth is this has little to do with the commercial that will run on Sunday. CBS wouldn’t air it if they thought it was going to be too controversial. Most people assume it will be much more family oriented than anti-abortion.

This actually has very little to do with the pro-life issue either. It’s about an influential figure using his status to promote a group who, in denouncing a bill in Uganda that would sentence homosexuals to life in prison or the death penalty, recently said, “we respect the desire of the Ugandan people to shield their nation from the promotion of homosexuality as a lifestyle morally equivalent to one-man, one-woman marriage.”

Right. We aren’t saying you should kill ‘em off, but we wouldn’t be opposed if they were cleansed from the earth either. That’s the group Tebow is supporting.

And you know what message he’s agreeing with?

"You know, I hate gay people, so I let it be known. I don't like gay people and I don't like to be around gay people. I am homophobic. I don't like it. It shouldn't be in the world or in the United States."

Tim Hardaway, a former NBA All Star, said that almost three years ago when he was asked how he would deal with having a gay teammate. That’s what this is about. The difference is Hardaway was already retired so it was easy for the NBA and any endorsements he might have had to sever ties with him.

Tebow is probably at the apex of his stardom. If those who cover the NFL are right about how little he’ll do as a player in the league, his value as a spokesperson will never be higher than it is right now. That’s why Focus on the Family focused in on him. Bang for their $2.5 million bucks.

The only question is, does Tebow really buy into this toxic group?

For once, let’s hope he just sold out.

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