Tiger, Part 2

[dlgood]

The generally hit or miss Bill Simmons has put forward some interesting (to me anyway) thoughts on Tiger, some of which I agree and disagree with.

Bill Simmons on Tiger: Part I, Part II

In a way, that's been the most unfathomable part of this story. Tiger Woods dominating the conversation at a holiday party??? For years, nobody had an interesting take on him other than, "Wow, that guy's great." I even wrote an entire column in 2002 titled, "Tiger: What Can You Say?" He designed it that way, avoiding the media other than generic news conferences and cream-puff interviews designed to promote himself or a product. We knew little about his personal life beyond "married a Swedish nanny, lives in Orlando, has two kids."
.....
By shutting himself off and stripping himself of anything that could be perceived as interesting, Tiger inadvertently made himself interesting. He also opened the door for a feeding frenzy if anything ever went wrong.
.....
Q: I doubt I'm the only one who thought this and I know it's all speculation at this point, but my first reaction to the Tiger Woods "accident" was "he's been spending way too much time with MJ and Barkley." Can't you picture them giving Tiger endless crap for skipping out on a party because he has to get home to the kids? Tiger's cool and all, but he's not NBA-superstar cool.
-- Mike R., Ann Arbor, Mich.

SG: You just nailed an essential component to this story: the School of MJ. Jordan is that buddy our wives and girlfriends hate. The one who's always trying to get you to go to Vegas, the one who keeps you out until 7 a.m., the one who spends ungodly amounts of money and expects you to keep up, the one who indulges in every vice to excess. In 2001, I was told by someone I trusted that Antoine Walker (whom MJ had taken under his wing) would go bankrupt trying to keep up with Jordan. He did. Again, MJ is a man of excess. And Tiger had the background of a child actor or a hotshot tennis player who was hitting 10 hours of balls a day from ages 6 to 18, the son of a military dad, who obviously wasn't letting off a ton of steam in his formative years. Throwing him to MJ's crew was like throwing young Bud Fox into Gordon Gekko's world. And look how that ended.

Duly noted. It doesn't help Tiger that he's never really been 'funny' or used his flaws in marketing. Charles Barkley can throw a guy through a window and we'll like him more. Heck, Barkley can admit to massive gambling losses, get arrested for driving drunk, and tell the cops he was cruising for a hooker - and we don't even think he'd need forgiveness. Michael Jordan's inner demons were often painted as the flipside of his tremendous will to win - so his image could survive people learning that he was sometimes a total bastard to people.

It doesn't help that he has no reputation as a "fun guy" or a "party guy", or even someone who mixes it up with the 'regulars' from time to time. (As Shaq does.)

So I guess that's my advice to the future megastars... if you're going to be public, have fun at your own expense and let everybody in on one of your very real flaws as the flipside to your success. That way, when you disappoint the public, you've already given them a hook to bring you back with.

Now, if Tiger can come back from those revelations that he was using Titlelist golf balls while endorsing Nike, he could still come back from this. Somewhat. Unless he's also been using PEDs. Then he's hosed. He's still got the "one of the greatest winners of all time in his sport" thing. He can't lose that...

Comments

[hjcallipygian.livejournal.com]

I thought you were going to talk about Simmons's theory that Tiger was drugged up on painkillers and sleeping pills when he crashed. I thought that was pretty interesting, too.

But Tiger's comeback story is really pretty inevitable. It's more a question of when, I think.

That said, I think that Peyton Manning has the ultimate public persona going for an athlete. He's competitive, but not afraid at all to make fun of himself. (I read that the whole, "Get in the portapotty!" bit on his SNL scene with the kids was ad-libbed by Manning with no one else's input. Makes it ten times funnier, I think.)

[dlgood.livejournal.com]

Oh, I totally buy Bill's sleeping pill theory.

Yeah - Tiger can come back as a golfer, but I don't see him coming back nearly so far as an Icon. Kobe survived the rape trial, and in many ways, is much more liked now. Before the trial, he was seen as a dickish prima donna 0 after the trial you say "he's a jerk, but he's not that bad and he's really suffered" so there's some sympathy he'd never had before.

Shaq has this giant rep as a funny, fun-loving party guy. No matter if he's someimes a big baby, or cheats as much as Tiger did. (Which I'm sure he did.) Heck, Shaq's been sleeping with Gilbert Arenas' long term girlfriend/wife (and that's an F-ed up story of it's own) and nobody cares.

Tiger never had any of that in his image. I think he's stuck here, unless (as one of Bill's readers suggested) he wants to come back as a Heel.

[hjcallipygian.livejournal.com]

It all comes back to being willing to talk about stuff. The media doesn't want to crucify Shaq because he's fun, he's a good interview. What's Tiger going to do, become more silent? There's nothing to lose and everything to gain by making the story huge.

Also, there's the game they play. Everyone loves a good teammate -- they're able to relate to that. Most people have a bad mental image of that guy at the golf course, except the guys who are always out at the golf course, and they are very image-conscious. They certainly don't appreciate that every time they say, "Honey, I'm going out to the golf course," for the next five years, their wife is going to say something about Tiger, cheating, and beating him with a golf club. That's no fun. Especially as, law of averages, probably a decent portion of them *are* cheating somehow or another.

[dlgood.livejournal.com]

True - though aside from the country club aspect, most golfers come across as kind of anonymous. (Outside of John Daly) Which is why golfers have to have epic levels of success to get huge outside of the sport.

That's no fun. Especially as, law of averages, probably a decent portion of them *are* cheating somehow or another.

Some of them. Most of them are only cheating at golf.

[hjcallipygian.livejournal.com]

Subject change:

Did you watch the Jags-Colts game last night? First time in two years that I've been at the Jags game and had an impaired voice the morning after. Great game, and I'm quite happy with the team -- I was curious what it looked like to an uninterested observer on the outside.

[dlgood.livejournal.com]

I though Jacksonville had played very well, excepting league-wide inability to stop Peyton Manning. Thought they had a good chance to pull it out, but wasn't shocked by the last minute pick.

Must have been a blast. Too bad for all of those "Jacksonville's not an NFL Town" stories everyone is running with. I hope things turn around. You'd think a ticket price drop would help fill seats...

[hjcallipygian.livejournal.com]

Jacksonville's unemployment rate is really misleading, because a lot of companies have held people on in order to keep them with benefits, but they're only getting 5-10 hours a week of actual paid work, or 20 at the most. So while our unemployment rate is only like 12%, the economic hit is a lot larger. Yesterday was a really big deal here and there was a lot of civic work done to make the day so successful.

Another issue is that there aren't many people who are in the next generation up from me (I'm 30) who are purely Jags fans. A lot of transplants are fans of their local team -- the Steelers always do well here, and that's not really because they're traveling. I know a TON of locals who are born & bred Steelers fans. Also, there's a major college mentality here. They're used to the rah-rah, fight for your team, screaming & yelling type players, and the NFL's calm professionalism puts them off. They expect the game to be more about athleticism rather than knowledge, cool heads, and doing a job.

Anyway, I think that once the economy picks up again, you'll really start to see a lot of people coming back to the stadium. It's a great experience -- and the traffic management and such is excellent. I know you've been to Redskins games, so this will totally freak you out: I left the stadium yesterday and got home inside of twenty minutes.

[dlgood.livejournal.com]

I could see how (1) college football and (2) legacy fans from older teams could be a problem for you fanbase. Having a good game experience really helps.

In DC, the biggest problem is just our clueless owner and his seeming lack of concern for the wishes of the fanbase. He's made his stadium experience a real chore to enjoy. As to the post-game traffic - some of that is crappy regional design (building a stadium that wasn't convenient to mass transit) but a lot of it was by owner's choice. He bought up a lot of surrounding land and lobbied the municipalities so that everyone has to park in his very expensive lots, and those lots are not well designed for getting in or out.

Plus, our traffic always stinks here anyway. Yes, I am jealous. And snowed in.

The Lovely FexEx Field experience

[dlgood.livejournal.com]

Just for your amusement, I went to last night's Giants-Redskins monday night game.

I live 25 miles from the stadium, and left at 630. By 730, I was in College Park, 7 miles from the stadium. By 830, at kickoff, I was 2 miles from the Stadium. At 915, we got into the parking lot.

At 950, the parking lot attendants gave up, and started having cars parallel park in the right lane of the stadium's arterial roads.

Because the upper deck concourse has no protection from the elements, and because they did a half ass job of clearing, the concourse was choked with smokers and people at concessions, and it took forever to actually get from the ramp to my section.

I was in my seat at 1015. Just in time for the second half kickoff. And my team was losing 24-0. Surrounded by many surly drunks.

Now, the good thing was, it only took 30 minutes to get out once we got to our car - it usually takes an hour just to get out of the stadium parking lot. Though, again, this was helped by the same problem that made finding a spot so hard.

See, the owner only plowed about half the lot. And numerous SUV drivers came in and parked in two spots at a time, which they could do because there are very few lot attendants.

I love our gameday experience. ... Yeah, but seriously, I don't think I'm going back. I went last night because my Brother-in-law was given the tickets by my sister (he's a Giants fan) and really wanted to go. And I knew if I didn't, he'd have nobody, so I wanted to do the guy a solid. But, yo, it sucked...

Re: The Lovely FexEx Field experience

[hjcallipygian.livejournal.com]

Holy shit that's awful.

I mean, obviously we don't have any snow to ever worry about. But still. I can't believe you didn't get to sit until halftime.

Thursday night, we left my friend's house at seven, I made a wrong turn or two (different parking lot than I'm used to), went through the worst traffic of the past two seasons, and I was in my seat by 7:45 at the latest. For an 8:20 start. (Also, the first quarter was insanely fast. Peyton didn't throw an incomplete pass, and Garrard threw one. End of first quarter: 8:45.)

Re: The Lovely FexEx Field experience

[dlgood.livejournal.com]

Yeah. Standard practice would have me driving to College Park and then taking all kinds of back roads to get close to the stadium while avoiding the highway traffic. Under usual conditions, it takes 60-90 minutes. But because of bad weather, I didn't trust the back roads, which are narrow, hilly, and may or may not have been safely plowed by night.

The bigger issue was the stadium lots. They didn't clear them. And FedEx has very poor access to mass transit, so if most of the 90,000 people show up, they're all driving and even worse parking. Snyder eliminated all the lots within a 20 minute walk and banned pedestrian access so he could jack up parking and capture all that sweet revenue, but it makes it hellish for fans.

[marenfic.livejournal.com]

People will get over it soon enough when the novelty has worn out. Who in this world is really surprised when a powerful man is revealed as an adultering bastard?

No one. Not really. People are only interested because instead of standing quietly at his side like a good betrayed wife, his wife took it public in a very "Cops Episode X" way. I bet there are a lot of old school white-bread golf fans who were just waiting for it.

After he wins again, no one will mention his however many affairs and excesses. He'll just be another spoiled rich athlete who takes advantage of his status and power to be a dick in his personal life.

(Hi, btw!)

[dlgood.livejournal.com]

Who in this world is really surprised when a powerful man is revealed as an adultering bastard?

...hey Jamie. This is Superman. You need to change the name on your phone, because I think Lois is looking at my BlackBerry....

Yeah. That comic will f'ing shock people...

After he wins again, no one will mention his however many affairs and excesses.

The golf press certainly won't. They're terrified of and almost totally beholden to him for his success.

There is still a difference to me, since Tiger was always so boring and bland - the tabloid aspect really blew up. It's not like Jordan - where we already knew he was kind of a dick - so the revelations fit in a pattern. Or A-Rod, who tried to make himself nice while everyone in the press said he was a jerk.

Tiger can come back, and he'll eventually get lots of endorsements but it's going to stain him because up until last month he was a kind of nerdy guy who was only known for his incredible greatness in his sport and seen as 'not a typical athlete jerk'. He lost the aura of exclusivity. And he'll always be a punchline.

(Also, Hi!)

[marenfic.livejournal.com]

Hee! Superman is such a man whore.

I'm jaded about high-profile men these days when it comes to infidelity. Now maybe some of the other stuff will stick, but only because it is the sport of golf and Tiger is black and that old school crowd will eat that shit up even though 10:1 they're doing the same thing. People in this country clearly don't care about sexual exploits beyond the immediate sensationalism. Your neck of the woods is proof enough of that for me, when men who are elected on "family values" platforms are the worst of the worst offenders and come out of it reelected.

Cynical woman, that's what I am.

[dlgood.livejournal.com]

This now has me thinking. I feel like we need to have a Top 10 list of 'Fictional Character Scandals' that would be on par with this one. (i.e. Superman is a man whore!)

And, that's fair. It particularly hurts Tiger for the "Family Values" thing you mention. Guys who have reps for already being "bad guys" or being "party types" are hurt less. (Just like, on our TV shows, fans forgive trespasses of anti-hero types far more easily than even smaller infractions from white hats.)

Race comes in for Tiger, but not even in the way you'd suggest. Because Tiger has never played up his race, taken not stands, and been so 'safe' on racial issues - that won't get him hit. For a very long time, he's had many of the benefits of his multi-racial background, but largely avoided the complications that would come with it. He's in more trouble from the black media, who seem to have noticed that as 'diverse' as Tiger is, his pool of women is not...

All of which gets back to - there are plenty of men who are secretly or not secretly spoiled cads. Some can, for the most part, get away with it. Some can't. I think Tiger's in the latter camp - this is going to stain him for a very long time.