My first reaction when the Tiger Woods story (are we calling this Ti-gate yet?) broke was indifference. Unlike most people, I seriously don’t think this is really significant news but I can see how people made it significant, what with it being Tiger Woods and all. The fact of the matter is that a ton of male professional athletes have multiple partners, whether they’re legally bound by marriage or not. Personally, I don’t hold athletes to a higher moral standard. Whenever I hear adulterous stories or those of similar nature regarding athletes, I try and immediately push it out of my mind. What keeps me engaged in sports is the story that occurs on the playing field, not the personal life of the participants off it. Granted, I’ve commented a couple of times on the psychology of sports athletes (Derek Roy , Patrick Kane ), but those have always related strongly to athletic performance. Personal relationships, on the other hand, do not.
This is probably going to come off as totally immature but I don’t care. I often have a lot of trouble understanding marriages. Men and women simply have different expectations, whether they’re conscious of them or not, when they make that initial commitment. These expectations frequently conflict and it amazes me how surprised people are when they finally do. That’s not to say marriages can’t work. They can and do, it just takes a great deal of emotional honesty in order for it to work long term. Any psychologist will tell you, most people, not excluding the athletes we revere, have trouble properly explaining their deepest emotions, don’t really know why they’re feeling them and for the most part are clueless on how to manage them. We all have primitive emotional needs and those that want to be happy will act to satisfy those needs. When one person in the match is an exceptionally powerful individual by societies standards, there’s an entirely different soup of emotional needs that surround the participants in that marriage which few understand and most vilify when acted upon. I’m not speculating here, this is biology .
I think questioning Tiger’s morality is fair. But that’s as far as I want to go down this freshly paved road of allegations towards Tiger. I’m not in a position to judge him. And I think this topic deserves more than just using a giant brush to paint over the whole situation with the he cheated, he’s a bad, bad man assertion made by, well, everyone. I was going to expand on that but then I read this article by Jason Whitlock that does it better than I ever could.
Just so I’m being clear, I’m not condoning Woods’ actions, rather I’d prefer to look beyond them and discuss the issues manifested as a result of what transpired. In the same way, I choose not to point fingers at sociopaths and state the obvious. It’s more constructive, in my mind at least to wonder how a story has come about and then contributing to the discussion and reaction that follows.
Anyway, I highly recommend that everyone take the time to read that article. While you’re doing that, try to put aside your predisposed reaction to individuals that engage in adultery and open yourself up to think about this issue critically, especially how it relates to professional athletes. Then come back here, tell me your opinion and call me a pig for trying to poke holes in the sacred institution of marriage.
Update:
This is that crazy video of Herm Edwards on SportsCenter that Bill Simmons has been talking about and that Jason Whitlock mentioned in his column. Best line in the entire rant: "Shame on the people that have been involved in this guys life for the last ten-fifteen years and watched this guy go down this road and not tell him, ‘You know what? DON’T GO DOWN THAT ROAD!" As Whitlock said, "Tiger is a grown-ass man with a billion dollars." Who in the world is in any kind of position to tell this guy what he should and shouldn’t be doing?