Tiger Woods and 3 women

This is how I remember.

 

Agree with all of this.

 

Same here. I could swear I remembered tuning into one of the ESPN daily shows and everyone giving him a fair amount of hell.

 

Unlike LeBron - I didn't question that the hype was unwarranted, just wondered about its inception.

 

Could have been partially because of his color, but who before had gone to Augusta at that age and blew away the competition like that? To my knowledge, no one.

 

This is the way I see it, too. How big you are has a lot to do with how big the fall is. When the steroids issue was getting a lot of coverage, Bonds was chasing Aaron and in the spotlight. McGwire had long since been erased from the record books by Bonds. I honestly don't think he got as much coverage because nobody cared about him anymore. Bonds was getting more criticism because he didn't come across as extremely friendly and because he was chasing what is probably the most coveted individual record in American sports.

 

He didn't demand special treatment, he earned it. Greatness means never having to exercise the artificial niceties that afflict the average.

 

That was the way the Kobe situation seemed to me. Roethlisberger's repeated incidents make him seem guilty.

 

Didn't an ESPN personality lose their job for tweeting "Rapelisburger"?

 

If you think the media's turn on Tiger isn't all about tossing red meat to the Rush Limbaugh listening, Mercedes driving, rednecks that inhabit country club locker rooms across America, I can't help you.

 

Key thing there being "lost their job." However, you can toss all kind of racial code words at, for example, Allen Iverson and it passes as hard hitting commentary.

 

Same reason for his sponsors pulling out?

 

Shouldn't have. That's funny. Easy, but funny.

 

Of course. Everyone runs to jump on a winner. However, it didn't take a rocket scientist to see there were those who built Tiger up for the sole purpose of making sure he had further to fall if things ever went bad. They knew the average golf slob, who sees the course and quarterback as the last spots in sports where people who look like them are still relevant in sports, would celebrate Tiger's demise.

 

Allen Iverson used to park his Bentley on the sidewalk of the Houlihan's off City Line Ave. in Philly and had a card game every night. (I think his game was spades; not sure). Big entourage, but never caused trouble.

He owned that town before everyone turned on him.

 

One of my recent favorites is how people have killed Iverson for his financial troubles, yet the media has given Christian Laettner, who took and lost other people's money, pretty much a pass. Hell, they've painted Mark Brunell, who's run through roughly $100mil, as a great guy who is just a victim of a bad economy. It's laughable.

 

Scottie Pippen has pretty much a pass as well.

 

What kills me, and I'm not talking about any athlete in particular, is when guys borrow money against their millions of dollars of earnings. What the hell do you need to finance when you are getting paid millions? I would be the new Randy Moss if I were making that, "I don't cut checks, straight cash homie"

 

Lenny Dykstra wishes he could get a free pass.

My general hypothesis still goes back that the seeds of enjoying any star athlete suffer go back to perceived douchebaggery, and not race. There will always be some that race is a factor, but I think overall personality has a lot more to do with it.

 

I was an acquaintance of a D1 player a few years back who left school early. Between announcement of leaving and before signing contract, he was borrowing big time money from someone (I definitely know that his new agent floated him a brick....with interest, but I don't know who all else it might have been). He bought a Jaguar for his mother, an H1 for himself (which he had pimped out with rims, tv's, games, etc.), and I think he bought 1-2 semi-reasonable rides (Toyota's, etc.) for his younger siblings or cousins, and the general knick knacks of the trade - jewelry, taking his friends all over the place, paying for everything.....you know the story, JG.

I kept asking him how he was going to make all of this work when he hadn't even been drafted yet. He was counting on going in "X" round where his signing bonus would be "X" amount. Unfortunately, he fell about 20-30 spots in the draft, and while he was spending "X" money, he only got a signing bonus worth "Y" return.

By the time he signed his contract, virtually all of his up-front money had evaporated in paying everyone back. Luckily, he knew a guy on his new team's roster and who shared an apartment with him until more money came in with the start of OTA's....or he wouldn't have had the money for a deposit, first and last month's rent, etc. on his own place. And, he's not the only one it happens to - in fact, it happens as often (or more) than not.