Sports Then and Now

Tearing down Tiger has become the latest sport for the world media.

I got an e-mail earlier today from the editor of one of the sports sites to which I occasionally post material. He said that the best way to immediately increase traffic for your articles was to write something about Tiger Woods. Over the last week their site has seen record traffic and they even had to add a new section on their site just to accommodate the volume of articles about Tiger.

Now I am all in favor of doing anything I can to increase visibility for the great work that a growing number of talented writers are producing on the Sports Then and Now network of web sites. However, I’m slightly conflicted by the fact that ST&N is a sports web site and except for the fact that Woods’ car accident last Friday morning caused him to cancel an appearance at a golf tournament, most of what has been covered over the last week really has almost nothing to do with sports.

Of course, I guess you could call tearing down a legend to be a kind of sport of its own. At least it seems to be a favorite sport of the media.

As a resident of the Orlando area, over the last week it has been almost impossible to watch television, listen to the radio or pick up the newspaper without reading about Woods, his accident and his alleged indiscretions. Media from across the globe have descended on the normally quiet Windermere area that Woods’ has called home for more than a decade.

This morning I was at a meeting with Gary Bruhn, the mayor of the Town of Windermere. Even though Woods actually lives in an unincorporated portion of Orange County that has a Windermere mailing address, the mayor and the city have been thrust into the spotlight and forced to deal with the residual impact of the incident. Read the rest of this entry →