Jay Mariotti Can't Resist, Has To Do Hack Job On Tiger Woods

Just a reminder I have set up a College Bowl Pick 'Em league. If anyone cares to join the league id is: 3711 and the password is: jamarcus. Feel free to join.

I have been following Jay Mariotti's columns all week (don't worry, I have spared my eyesight and not read every single of one of his columns. I can't subject myself to that much bad journalism) because I have noticed he has been on the very edge of writing one of his typical hack job columns about Tiger Woods. Today we have gotten that column. There is an old adage that the media builds up people higher only to watch them fall further. It's not really an adage, it's the truth, and no columnist I know of enjoys doing this more than Jay Mariotti. Whenever he can get on his high horse and start preaching from the pulpit about how athletes should be held to a higher standard than every other human being, Jay Mariotti takes advantage of that opportunity. I am not here to defend Tiger Woods, but to demean Jay Mariotti.

We wanted to believe he was above the fraudulent fray, true to his family values, good and wholesome enough to help shape the world well into the future.

We want to believe this about nearly every single person and role model but that doesn't mean it is true. I remember last winter Jay Mariotti wrote an article hacking Michael Phelps to pieces (if anyone remembers it is the post that got an entire Apolo Ohno message board angry with me because I made fun of him and Julianne Hough) after he got caught smoking pot in South Carolina. Mariotti made it sound like Phelps would be ruined forever by this incident. Less than one year later......few people remember the Phelps incident and even fewer care.

The most famous and wealthy golfer in the world cheated on his wife with a series of women. If that shocks you then I am proud of your ability to be think the best of people, but am shocked at your ability to be naive. From a sexist, pig male point of view I don't even get why he cheated. It's not like any of the women he cheated with were an upgrade on his wife. If you are going to cheat and be a sleaze dog, at least aim a little higher. I digress...

That's what Tiger Woods was destined to do, according to his late father. "Tiger will do more than any other man in history to change the course of humanity," Earl Woods once said famously.

If we held every person, and more specifically sports-parent, to the expectations they have for their children then we are going to have a bunch of really disappointed parents in the world.

More than Buddha, he said. More than Gandhi, he said. More than Nelson Mandela, he said. "Because he has a larger forum than any of them,'' he theorized.

This is obviously loony talk. I don't think we can take anything a parent says about their child as fact. If a child plays the piano perfectly at the age of 10, then the parents of that child believe the child to be a prodigy and if a 7 year old kid plays basketball well, the parents will think that child is the next Michael Jordan.

Notice how Mariotti builds up Tiger Woods to a certain high level so he can tear him down? He's building Tiger up to a level he could never reach so what he did will seem that much worse.

Remember all the occasions at golfing majors when Tiger would credit his wife and family for his maturity, his equilibrium, his historic preeminence on the course? All of that was a lie, apparently.

It may not have been a lie. His wife and family could have done all of those things for him, but he still wanted to screw around. These are two mutually exclusive issues. No one would argue that Hillary Clinton didn't help Bill Clinton when he was President of the United States make some difficult decisions, but he still screwed around on her. It doesn't mean she never helped him with his job, it just means while she helped him with his job, his mind lusted for slightly overweight interns.

Thus began an affair that lasted more than 2 1/2 years and involved more than 300 text messages between them, some of which, if true, take sex texting to new levels of long-distance body heat.

And apparently Jay Mariotti knows the limits of sex-testing and long-distance body heat?

(Bengoodfella vomiting)

To hear the tale from US Weekly, formerly one of those tabloids we'd ignore at the newsstand while searching for sports magazines,

Jay Mariotti usually ignores this magazine, but because he wants to tear down Tiger Woods US Weekly will be his main source of information for this story. See, tabloids like this are only useful when it proves something Mariotti wants them to prove.

When I first heard the voice mail tape Wednesday morning on the magazine's Web site, I didn't want to believe it was him.

Now Mariotti is visiting this tabloid magazine's web site for information. I like how US Weekly used to be a tabloid in Mariotti's mind, but now that it has gotten this one story right Jay Mariotti gives it total credibility in matters of journalism. In today's sports journalism, it takes just one accurate story to give a magazine or writer credibility, which still doesn't explain why some people take Jay Mariotti seriously.

Considering the National Enquirer was the tabloid magazine that originally broke the story that Tiger was cheating on his wife, I wonder if Jay gives that magazine credibility now as well? If so, the police should worry less about Tiger Woods traffic accident and more about the alien wolf-boy that was just found in the desert of Egypt.

Like that, quicker than it takes to unzip a fly, the image of the world's biggest and richest athlete was tarnished forever. Suddenly, Woods was no different than Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan, Alex Rodriguez, Roger Clemens, Charles Barkley and other megastar athletes whose careers have been smudged to varying degrees by deceit in their personal lives.

Or Babe Ruth who ran around with whores and very well may have created the modern STD, or Wilt Chamberlain who bragged about all the women he slept with and passed on the legacy of Ruth and the modern STD, or Julius Erving who had a child that he completely denied the existence of until she had a good run at Wimbledon a few years ago. Or pretty much any other athlete in the history of sports who were also not the best role models for "the youth," but they never got caught doing all the things they did because there wasn't blanket media coverage at the time? How about all those people and their careers being smudged?

Guess what Jay Mariotti? Athletes are wealthy, in good shape, on the road lonely for days/weeks at a time, and have women who want to be around them. They cheat. It's not going to stop happening every time soon and pretty much every athlete does it. Except for Jake Delhomme, any pass he has ever made at a woman has been intercepted.

(Ba-da-I have lost all respect for myself)

In this age of performance-enhancement deception and infidelity, Tiger always carried himself as the one athlete who was faithful to his wife and had only one mistress:

As opposed to the other athletes who walk around with women in their bedroom and on their arm in full view of their wife and family. Jay Mariotti WANTED Tiger Woods to be different but that doesn't mean he is. I want Coach K to run a 2-1-2 zone that is working effectively in the first half of a game at least once in the second half of a game, but that doesn't mean he is going to do it. I want to believe the Panthers best LB was not using cocaine on a lake this past summer as a current lawsuit against him alleges, but that doesn't mean it is false.

Most likely, he'll be scalded by the fire.

Tiger Woods is going to be fine. Don't be dramatic. It's really a personal matter and if anyone cares to judge Tiger Woods for what he has done, they're hypocritical idiots. He screwed up over a long period of time and it makes him a sleazeball, but it doesn't make him a bad golfer and that is all people will care about in one year.

The fallout will be more devastating for Woods than the aforementioned sinners because we had so many hopes for him and held him to such a lofty standard as a person.

Again, we held him up to this standard so we are going to let him fall even harder because our expectations for him were so high. It's not exactly a fair way to judge which of these "sinners" are worse people. Should the fallout for Dennis Rodman be less devastating than the fallout for Tiger Woods because we expect Rodman to sleep with other men/women/animals, while we don't expect that from Tiger? I think it is funny our culture has no problem with people who are known assholes doing asshole things, we can accept this, but when someone is a nice person and is an asshole at some point, it's the end of the damn world and that person's career. Jay Mariotti is furthering this type of thought right here.

And let there be no doubt that Woods has been peddling an image. While his wife and children didn't appear in his ads, he was presenting the picture of a young family man every time he climbed into a Buick.

I am a little appalled that Jay Mariotti has just now figured out that athletes present an "image" to the public of how they want to be perceived. Does Jay really think "The NBA Cares?" Those NBA players are required to give certain amounts of time during the year to wonderful causes by their teams and the NBA, it's not optional. I am pretty sure it is in their contract or in some other form of legal writing that is binding that they do the nice things captured in the "NBA Cares" commercials. Really the commercials should have the tagline, "The NBA Requires It's Players To Care, So They Do With Slight Reluctance."

Athletes present an image to sell themselves and their products and Jay Mariotti knows this. He is just pretending as if he doesn't know this so he can act like the hurt little journalist and can dismiss Tiger actions as the very epitome of deceit on the American public. I guarantee you Jay Mariotti is not shocked by Tiger's actions. Mariotti knows if he was shocked by Tiger's transgressions then his actions would have been expected of him and he would fall in the Dennis Rodman category of athlete and Mariotti couldn't talk about what a horrible fall Tiger's reputation is going to take. So Mariotti has to pretend to be shocked so he can take Tiger to task for not being a perfect person.

Or the picture of class and honesty when he appeared in those Gillette ads with Derek Jeter, Sports Illustrated's Sportsman of the Year and Roger Federer, another family man.

What was Tiger supposed to do in the ads, stab Federer in the back with a shiv, punch The Jeter in the face and march off the screen with a Playboy bunny on each arm? It's a fucking commercial, they are trying to sell a product so they want to present a fake picture of class and honestly...it's not real.

I hate to break this to Mariotti but that's not a real family in the AT&T Rollover Minutes commercial. I bet that lady isn't even those kid's real mother! This is deceit of the highest order!

And don't tell me that more than half the marriages fail in this country and that more than half the married men have affairs. Tiger Woods, by nature of his magnitude on the planet, was supposed to be an American hero. He is not.

Don't hit Jay Mariotti with actual facts! Let him cling to his ancient and unrealistic view of the world and the modern athlete.

Tiger Woods was supposed to be a hero on the golf course, not a role model for the world to base their family values upon. I am not making excuses for Tiger Woods, but he is freaking golf player, not a priest or any other type of religious figure who is judged for their piety. He is a sleazeball in regard to being faithful to his wife. He portrayed a more wholesome image of himself to the public to sell products, only the most naive person would think that public portrayal actually represented his private portrayal as well.

Tiger wasn't driving a Buick (it was a Cadillac) when he got in his accident and I don't think he wakes up in the morning and kids around with Thierry Henry, Derek Jeter, and Roger Federer after shaving. In fact, those four athletes weren't even in the same place when the commerical was shot, they use evil technology to trick the viewer into thinking they were there together by superimposing them all in the same shot together. What deceit on the part of Gillette! I thought Tiger, Roger, Derek and Thierry were all best friends!

If his apology was sincere, his arrogance took over again when he lashed out at media organizations who, despite their tawdry reputations and apparent checkbook journalism, were accurate in their reporting.

Because these media organizations were accurate this one time, all of their other transgressions in invading Tiger's life and the lives of other athletes with inaccurate stories and speculation is immediately forgiven by Jay Mariotti. While, because Tiger screwed up and was a sleazeball in this phase of his life, all of the other good things he has done is immediately forgotten by Jay who condemns him. There is a little irony in this.

But he is the one dumb enough to leave a texting and voice mail trail, so this really isn't the time for one of his arrogant commentaries about the intense scrutiny he deals with. He provided one anyway.

So because the private voicemails and text messages Tiger sent have been made public by the media, he shouldn't be able to rail against his private life and transgressions being made public by the media? I hope Jay realizes this doesn't make any sense. Basically if the media catches Tiger doing something wrong and publishes private voicemails and texts, he should not have a right to be angry that these types of correspondence were made public? I wonder how Jay would like it if his private conversations were made public?

This is the problem with a lot of the media today, they think as long as the story they are telling is accurate they have a right to tell the story and delve into details of a person's life as much as they want. Tiger Woods chose to be a public figure, but the media loves to hide behind one example of accuracy to excuse themselves for dozens of other inaccurate and privately invasive stories. Tiger Woods should expect to have his personal life and problems dissected because of who he is as a public figure, but that doesn't mean he shouldn't have a semi-right to get pissy when incorrect (or even eventually partially correct) speculation is spewed about in the media.

But for me, the virtue of privacy is one that must be protected in matters that are intimate and within one's own family. Personal sins should not require press releases and problems within a family shouldn't have to mean public confessions.

I am a private person and I am not a public figure so I am not in the situation to disagree with this statement that Tiger has made. Obviously there should be the expectation that Tiger's personal sins are going to be made public, that's just a fact with the position he is in. That's not enough for Jay Mariotti and the media, they want blood.

Even blood is not enough for the media. They want to see a public apology so that they can call him insincere, they want to see Tiger cry with his wife beside him so they can judge her for standing by Tiger, they want to see his kids at the press conference so they can talk about what a screwed up and poor life moral life they are subjected to, and they want to hear Tiger say what EXACTLY it was he did so they can try and poke holes in his story and prove that he is still lying all while "coming clean." It may be smart for Tiger to publicly confess, but I can't blame him for not doing this.

The points he makes are well-taken but ill-timed. We need to hear complete humility from him, not the whine of someone who tried to fight his way through the rumors until he was too deep in doo-doo to avoid getting caught.

"We" don't need to hear complete humility from Tiger Woods because "we" aren't his wife or his family. Contrary to whatever bizarre belief Jay Mariotti has, Tiger Woods does not owe any of us an apology at all. He owes an apology to his wife and family. Tiger has in no way wronged the American public...hell, the American public has enjoyed this whole affair.

What's sad is that Tiger Woods, whose foundation is a powerhouse that has donated more than $30 million to communities via grants and scholarships, will take a bigger hit than any of the others.

That's not true. Every new sports scandal is always seen as worse than the last scandal and each time sportswriters will write that THIS is the hardest one for the sports figure involved in the scandal to recover from, it is proven incorrect. The media said it with A-Rod, Kobe, and many others and it never turned out to be true.

And Bryant? No one sells more NBA jerseys these days than a one-time womanizer who was charged with rape before acquitted. Why will Tiger take the biggest hit? His transgressions came completely out of the blue, meaning the shock value will linger for some time.

Kobe's transgressions came completely out of the blue. He was accused of freaking rape! Anyone who remembers the Kobe Bryant situation in Colorado was absolutely shocked by this. What happened? Kobe apologized, bought his wife a huge ring, got a new tattoo, changed his jersey number and moved on successfully with his life. Tiger will do the same no matter how much Jay Mariotti wants to lie and say it is not true.

The damage to his image is done. Now, how will his golf game be affected? Though his comeback from reconstructive knee surgery was successful and he won six times, he didn't win a major event in 2009.

He didn't win a major event? OMG, that's the end for Tiger Woods, pack up his clubs, and get the U-Haul, Tiger Woods is done as a professional golfer. Tiger came in second in the PGA Championship and easily could have won Master's this year. Elite athletes can throw themselves into their sport in times of crisis, Tiger has done this before, and I think he will do it again. He will be fine...not that Jay Mariotti really cares. He actually wants this incident to destroy Tiger Woods so he can get up on his high horse and talk about how Tiger ruined his private and professional life.

But everywhere he goes, Woods will hear whispers -- and maybe even taunters -- about Jaimee Grubbs.

Not taunters! Tiger can handle an angry wife but people taunting him is something he could probably never recover from.

He always has tried to cultivate friendships with other golfers, but perhaps now his rivals see a crack in the Woods fortress.

I am pretty sure other professional golfers won't stop from becoming friends with Tiger Woods because he is having a difficult time in his personal life.

If Jay Mariotti is trying to link other golfers seeing Tiger having trouble in his personal life and equating that to these same golfers gaining more confidence to beat Tiger in a tournament, I don't think I see this parallel.

Gandhi and Mandela, it seems, have nothing to worry about. Their places in history are secure, unthreatened by a golfer with a permanent smear on his name.

Because the natural parallel the entire world thought of when they heard the name "Tiger Woods" was of two historically peace loving and world changing world leaders. Again, we can't believe everything sports fathers say about their children...a lot of it is hyperbole and the product of a parent who thinks incredibly highly of his child.

With apologies to the late Earl Woods, Tiger has done more than any other man in history to change the course of infidelity, not humanity.

"He has done more than any other man in history to change the course of infidelity?" Really???????????????? There is absolutely no way this statement is even close to being correct in any fashion.

I don't know how Jay Mariotti still has a job. He is a classless person who takes every chance he can get to jump on an athlete for a transgression so he can lambast that athlete for not upholding the high standard that Mariotti sets for the world and he takes sick pleasure in seeing people's lives being nearly ruined. He is also a very, very bad sportswriter.

Apparently the "First Church of Tiger Woods" blog has closed because of Tiger's actions. While obviously the gentleman who runs the blog can do whatever he wants with the blog, I find it slightly ironic that a person who has created a fake church (worshipping false prophets anyone?) dedicated to an athlete is closing the site for morality reasons. Maybe it's not ironic and I am an idiot. The guy is a sleaze and an asshole but I can't help but be constantly amused when people pass judgment on others. Regardless, the man who runs the site John Ziegler seems to be a passionate conservative (no political discussion please) and for some reason it surprises me he would create a fake church to an athlete due to his political leanings. Either way, he is rid of Tiger Woods now that Woods has shown himself not to be Christ reborn.

Another part of this situation I find interesting is that everyone is feeling completely sorry for Elin Woods, which should definitely happen because she is a victim and it must destroy her emotionally to publicly learn about her husband's running around on her, but it's not like she doesn't know how to play the game too. Check out this link. I find the "renegotiation" to be pretty dumb in my mind. If she is going to leave him, she needs to get some self respect and not worry about the money and leave him. It's not like she has no reason to leave Tiger or won't get anything out of the divorce. So the "Church of Tiger" is closed, but the media's reaction continues to amuse me.