The Potential Lessons of Tiger's Trysts

Scott Tinley, a two-time Ironman World Champion, is a professor teaching sport humanities courses at San Diego State University. He is the author of several books. His most recent work is Racing the Sunset.

In less than a fortnight, Tiger Woods' sex-ploits, will have come and gone.

Last month's maelstrom of media surrounding tennis great Andre Agassi's shocking admission of methamphetamine use seems a distant sales hook. Once again our consumer culture, marinated in TV trivia, enamored with the taste of itself, has eaten its own offspring, devoured that which it developed.
Nothing new. And no one is the wiser for it.

In our sound-bite society, the fallout of Woodsgate once again suggests that sport reflects society. And if there is something essentially wrong with our social world, to see it unfold in (what we hope is the valorous meritocracy of) sport should prompt us to expand the conversation well beyond the tabloids and the technosphere. Woods' liaisons and their colonization in the media suggest that lacking any real discussion of the whys and what-fors is yet another missed opportunity for self examination. For within the tiger's tale may lie many lessons beyond moral choice.

What's pathetic about the entire imbroglio is not the fate of his marriage, his family or his value to golf. It's not the pathos dripping from the jaws of a content-hungry mass media. It's not even our voracious consumption of Woods' crucifixion in some viral clause of moral turpitude. Indeed, who among us haven't cheated at something, sometime, somewhere, we ask. It's distinctly American, we remind ourselves, to win at anything we do. Even if it means losing everything.

No, what is sad is that with the world watching, we are missing multiple opportunities to deconstruct the entire affair and perhaps learn more from it than the sordid details of one man's addictions and afflictions. Because it's not one man that we are talking about here. We can no longer defer to such worn clichés as men being men, the tyranny of fame or the culture of celebrityhood. Woods' behavior patterns and our consumption of them is not just the tired story of a fallen hero but one that might offer us insight into changing hero paradigms and the possible end of ancient myth.

How we reached a point where news stories were running 30 to 1--Tiger's transgressions to 30,000 in new troop deployment-lies at the saddest center of this situation. Infidelity over an indefinite war. Trysts over terrorism.

To attempt some understanding of the paradox we must remember that great irony can drive a story better than most narrative strategies. Here's Woods, perhaps the most carefully-constructed athlete of our time; from his father to his Foundation to his financial investments, not a multicultural hair out of place. We looked upon his considerable contributions to our world of sport and by extension, felt our inner desires to have what he had. That "cablanasian" crossover quietude, that steadied assurance, that…reserve in the face of hyperbolic professional sport, Woods' skill and money and fame and style were to be coveted for sure. But secretly, we mostly wanted the same thing that he did-privacy and a sense of Self.

We just didn't know it.

Here's a world that lusts after its 15 minutes of fame, has made several billion dollar industries out of that peculiar addiction. Pseudo-events abound. You too can be made over, made famous and if necessary, simply made up. But here was Woods playing Russian Roulette with a publicity machine that can destroy as fast as it can create.

In asking for privacy and immunity from public investigation, Woods was leveraging a near-perfect image, near perfect golf and a heavily-veiled dismantling of the white, patriarchal world of golf. And it worked in the way that JFK mortgaged his dalliances with his democracy and Michael Jordan his gambling with his greatness.

What we secretly admired in Woods was the power he had to ask for and receive a chance at a normal earth-bound existence while living in the stratosphere. He and his multinational sponsors fed us exactly what they knew we would like-nothing more, nothing less. Woods never had to grovel for the illusion of friendship on Facebook, blogging his way to immortality one tweet at time. His disavowing of the public sphere was a fresh twist. He was diversity light, nothing threatening. He could rewrite the rules because he was that good. Smart enough to turn the other cheek so long as we turned a blind eye to anything beyond what he wanted us to see.

And we all wanted a $150 million yacht and to name it "Leave Me Alone, I Earned This By Being Perfect."

But when something it too good to be true, then it's too good to be true.

Oh, the irony.

By Scott Tinley: